Germany is among the most advanced countries when it comes to recycling, and in the city of Rostock, Council Associate Partner Veolia is converting one billion plastic bottles each year into granulate used to make new bottles. Once they are collected and transported to the processing center, the bottles are pre-sorted by color, with their caps and any residual waste removed,. The bottles are then ground into flakes and subjected to a hot wash, processing the flakes into food-grade is achieved by a mechanical-chemical recycling step. After being purified in a final step and packed into big bags, these PET flakes can be delivered to manufacturers of plastic bottles and manufactured into ”new” PET bottles.