The position has been taken by Paul Martin, 46, who has spent several months already with the organisation to get a good grounding of current issues.
 Paul Martin, new chief executive of Alupro |
Mr Martin has held a number of senior posts in the trade association and public affairs sector, most recently as director general of the Timber Trade Federation, but before that with CBI Scotland, Ofwat and Thames Water. He is a graduate of Edinburgh University, and also served as an Edinburgh city councillor for 12 years.
Mr Martin said: “The first challenge for Alupro is to make sure that aluminium packaging recycling targets are met through to 2008, and to guide investment from PRN revenues and Government sources to meeting that end.”
He added: “The industry has invested heavily through all the years when consumer recycling was largely ignored in the UK in favour of collecting easy-to-access commercial packaging waste, and our official recycling rate of 26% for all aluminium packaging, with an estimated 32% for drinks cans, compares very favourably with 15% for all household waste.
“Now that domestic recycling is beginning to take off, we are making sure that lightweight aluminium takes its proper place in the drive to divert high tonnages of waste from landfill – at up to 700 per tonne, it more than earns its place in the collection mix.”
 The aluminium cans sector faces some difficulties because a high number of used cans are discarded 'a;way from home' |
Despite Mr Martin's optimism that the value of aluminium will encourage its collection, especially by local authorities, there are real concerns in the industry that councils will not collect enough of the material. And, the aluminium sector still struggles to collect volumes of used drinks cans used away from home – only a few local authorities have street banks for cans although special provision is sometimes made for outdoor events.
Local authorities are often not targeting cans for recycling because of their low weight and while steel cans bring less revenue than aluminium, they may even be preferred because they are often heavier.
In a bid to encourage councils to collect more cans, Alupro is supporting research by compliance scheme Valpak into how more cans can be collected and where they are.
Figures for aluminium packaging recycling have also been knocked back by the methodology used which has resulted in an apparent reduction in the recycling rate. This is due to a decision to switch to using PRN (packaging waste recovery note) tonnes only from 2002 – rather than previous calculations which estimated recycling across all UK reprocessors.
Registered
The new approach to the data is seen as more appropriate. This is because packaging is such a small part of the business for most aluminium reprocessors, many have not registered to issue PRNs, losing around 8% of the estimated overall recycling rate.
Mr Martin said: “Our drive to get market data as accurate as possible can be seen in the context of the tonnages of small, difficult to collect items of obligated aluminium packaging shown in the pie chart.”
The chief executive was referring to the fact that the sector is also keen to target smaller items of packaging but also wants recognition for the fact that this can be difficult to collect.
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