Consumers urged to lobby councils to recycle Tetra Paks

The company, which specialises in fruit juice drinks and smoothies, has provided a letter template on its website for people to write to their local authority if there is not a Tetra Pak scheme available in their neighbourhood.

”We have written a template letter to raise awareness of recycling among our customers. “
– Ailana Kamelmacher, Innocent Drinks Innocent is steering customers towards the website with statements on the labels of its products.

A spokeswoman for Innocent Drinks, Ailana Kamelmacher, said the seven-year-old company's intention was to spread the healthy image of its products to its own corporate activities.

She confirmed: “We have written a template letter to raise awareness of recycling among our customers, encouraging consumers to write to their local council.”

“Recyclable”
The Innocent spokeswoman said her company had been told that Tetra Paks – cartons made of bonded paper, plastic and aluminium – are recyclable, and that “60% of Tetra Paks are recycled in Germany”.

But while Tetra Pak collections in Germany are heavily subsidised by packaging producers – with cartons ultimately sent to Finland for recycling – in the UK there is only one recycling plant, the Smith Anderson facility in Fife.

Research from last year found that only 7% of UK local authorities collect Tetra Paks for recycling. Some of these collect the cartons within mixed paper schemes, where only a small proportion of cartons can be included before loads are effectively contaminated.

Last month saw Norfolk county council revealing that its new recycling scheme for Tetra Pak cartons was not going well (see letsrecycle.com story).

“Difficult”
One expert in aluminium recycling told letsrecycle.com yesterday that Tetra Paks are “very difficult” to recycle, and that even when recycled, while the paper pulp can be made into new cardboard remaining fractions are sent to landfill.

Tetra Pak itself has a scheme hosted on its website in which consumers can print off labels to send their used cartons to the Smith Anderson plant. The consumers must, however, pay for the postage themselves.

The company has stated: “Together with our schools and customer recycling initiatives, we aim to achieve a 10% recycling rate for post-consumer carton waste by 2008.”

PET
Tetra Paks are currently used for Innocent's one-litre range of drinks. Commenting on its packaging policy, the Innocent spokeswoman said the company was always seeking to find better ways to package its goods and is “open to any ideas”.

Innocent does package some of its products in recyclable plastic bottles, however, and Ms Kamelmacher explained that the company has been working to improve the amount of recyclable plastic used in the bottles.

She said: “Our plastic bottles already use 25% post-consumer PET,” she said, “and we are hoping to get that up to 50% soon. We have also reduced the amount of plastic used in the bottles.”