Smurfit Kappa wins Nottingham paper bank deal

The arrangement will see one of the world's largest packaging companies collecting newspapers and magazine, card, directories and Yellow Pages from locations across Nottingham, before baling them up at a local transfer station.

From here, the paper will be transported to the Smurfit Kappa paper mill in Birmingham where it is used to make a range of new packaging materials.

Smufit Kappa said that the deal involved the servicing of 34 paper banks in total, but would not reveal the value or length of the contract for commercial reasons.

George Johnson, regional operations manager for Smurfit Kappa Recycling in the Midlands, said: “The advantage of our mixed paper grade is that it includes all paper-based materials, which means that greater volumes of material can be diverted from landfill, boosting recycling rates In our experience mixed paper recycling services work well because they are easy for residents to understand.”

Nottingham city council has 69 recycling centres collecting a wide range of materials ranging from cans, and plastic to shoe and boots.

Bethany Pugh, recycling officer at Nottingham city council, said: “We are taking positive steps to achieve our government target recycling rate of 25% for next year, and are moving in the right directionfor the 40% target which councillors have set us to meet by 2011.”