Technically yes.
As long as the materials satisfy the requirements for food contact, they can be used. IMEX, that rarely happens. There are many reasons to avoid food application of post-consumer recycled plastic:
- Unknown usage history. Polymers mostly don't have a dense structure. They can absorb several substances in their lifetime. Nobody knows what the impurities are to make any accurate risk analyses.
- Degradation. The recycling process consists of grinding, melting, etc. Heat for melting can break weak organic chemical bonds in polymer chains. The shorter molecule chains are, the poorer mechanical properties the plastic performs (e.g. migration barrier). Beside that, broken bonds create byproducts (e.g. oligomers) which can be unwanted contaminants.
- Modification. Long exposure to air and heat in recycling process cause modifications on polymeric molecules such as oxidation with atmospheric oxygen. New functional groups can trap moisture water, catalyse other chemical reactions (e.g. producing carbonyl groups). So that the recycled plastic no is longer as safely neuter as the virgin one.
- Mixing-up. People usually assembly one plastic kind with other materials in a composite products. For example of a water bottle, the bottle body is made of PET, the cap of PP and label of paper. The separation (delamination in your case) and sorting are needed and are cumbersome jobs. The sorted plastic still contains a certain amount of other kinds.
- Tough validation. The above reasons leave so many considerations to verify food grading of recycled plastic; e.g. gathering usage information, checking material sources and compositions, frequent analyses of recycled materials, controlling of sorting process, controlling of contamination, hazard and risk analyses, etc.
It seems not to be economic or working ease.
AFAIK, post-consumer recycled plastics are always mixed with virgin one (max. 15-20%) to ensure their properties. I only find them in non-food usages, in case of PE, it's the inner net of a jacket, or a shampoo bottle, or lining of power wires.
Hope you can find results for your idea.
