One in five councils now collect Tetra Pak at kerbside

According to Tetra Pak UK and Ireland, 20% of the UK's local authorities are now collecting the cartons in this way – compared to the 11% which it said offered the service in October 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story).

She added: “We and our industry partners are committed to increasing the level of carton recycling in the UK and our work with local councils across the country takes us and people living in these areas one step closer to achieving that.”

The company cited Cambridge city council as an example of a local authority that had recently begun to offer kerbside collections, which Ms Dashper claimed put it “at the forefront” of UK recycling efforts.

A list of councils offering kerbside collections is attached below.

Funding

Tetra Pak said it had made “significant funding” available since April 2007 to help councils start up carton collection services, but it stressed that it had not made specific money available to help councils move from a bring bank service to kerbside collection.

The company does, however, provide support in areas such as communications, to help councils to encourage residents to recycle the cartons, which have traditionally been seen as difficult to recycle because they are made of fused paper, plastic and metal.

Tetra Pak has claimed that, while the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE UK) will pick up sorted cartons free of charge, the majority of councils fund the actual collections themselves and make their own arrangements for the materials to be baled as mixed fibres in the UK.

Reprocessing

However, despite trials in UK mills, cartons still have to be sent to overseas to be recycled, which has been the case since the closure of the UK's only facility capable of reprocessing the material – the Smith Anderson mill in Scotland – in 2006 (see letsrecycle.com story).

A spokeswoman for Tetra Pak confirmed that it was still sending waste cartons to Sweden to be recycled, but claimed that its priority was to ensure that collection and recycling of cartons could continue “uninterrupted”.

“This is the most important thing in helping residents across the UK to recycle as much of their packaging as possible,” she said.

And, she stressed that all transportation was measured to ensure that the carbon emitted was offset with “credible” offsets.