The council is about to start accepting food and drinks cartons at four of its civic amenity sites, working with the Liquid Food Carton Manufacturers Association.
The cartons will be baled and bulked up at the Cillefwr materials recycling facility in Carmarthenshire, which is operated by the council’s arm-length company – Carmarthenshire Recycling.
Drop-off points have been set up at the council’s four CA sites in Trostre, Wernddu, Nantcaws and Llangadog. Collections are also being made from 144 of the 146 local schools.
The bales will be taken to the Fife carton reprocessing plant, the only such plant in the UK, joint-owned by packaging firm Smith Anderson and the LFCMA. There the cartons will be broken down and recycled into carrier bags and compost sacks.
Kerbside
Diane Thomas, the council’s sustainability officer, said Carmarthenshire was planning to collect cartons as part of its kerbside service in the future, but that current infrastructure didn’t allow for this.
She said: “We have been trialling a pink bag scheme and a blue box scheme on about a third of our 78,000 residents, we have now worked out how we want to progress for the future. Presently we don’t have enough space on our vehicles and in the collection containers.”
Ms Thomas added that previously Carmarthenshire sent its cartons to a cardboard recycling facility. “We didn’t get much money for doing this, but we will get more with this new system,” she explained.
| Related links: |
The sustainability officer said it would be great to have a facility for carton recycling nearer by, but for the time being, taking the cartons to Scotland would have to do. “We have heard that the company would like to set up other facilities around Britain,” she said, added: “It would be good to have one, perhaps, in Cardiff.”
Register for free to comment