Conceived and designed by Valpak over the last eight months, the new centres take up prominent positions in Tesco car parks and provide bright, clean environment to encourage shoppers to recycle their paper, plastic, bottle, cans and textiles there.
Glass will go to Berryman's, paper, plastic and cans to Severnside and textiles to the Salvation Army. Tesco will receive the benefit of packaging waste recovery notes (PRNs) issued for the packaging material to help it comply with its packaging waste obligations via Valpak.
 Tesco's Stella Collinson, Berryman's Mick Keogh, Valpak chairman John Gummer and Valpak chief executive Jonson Cox at the new recycling centre in Royston |
Commenting on the new centres, Valpak chief executive Jonson cox said: “This is a very impressive move by Tesco. There are increasing targets driving the need for us to do more to collect packaging and these centres will make it easier for people to recycle.
“The material from here will be traded for recycling through reprocessors and the PRNs will go to help Tesco meet its obligations under the packaging waste regulations – our goal has always been to find self-help ways for organisations to get their PRNs,” he added.
It is thought hat about 195 tonnes of paper, 200 tonnes of glass, 13 tonnes of plastic bottles and around seven tonnes of cans will be collected each year by each of the sites at Royston, Borehamwood and Watford in Hertfordshire. This material will count towards local authority targets.
The smart-looking centre is also designed to attract advertising – with changeable bill posters above each bring bank – which will help provide extra returns on the initial investment by Tesco. These posters will also be used to encourage shoppers and reassure them that their sorted packaging waste is being recycled – using actual figures from onboard weighing systems on the collection vehicles taking part in the scheme.
Information will also be taken from the onboard weighing systems to allow Valpak to look into how best to avoid contamination and encourage more participation.
Valpak business development manager Duncan Simpson, who designed the new facilities, told letsrecycle.com: “We weren't looking for the right bins for the environment – the important thing about this new concept was to provide the right environment for the bins. So it's been designed to be bright and clean and straight-forward for the shoppers to use, while having easy access for the collectors to pick up the material.”
The glass will all be turned into new containers according to Berryman's Mick Keogh, collected in multi-compartmented vehicles with some of the green glass going to markets abroad, where there is greater demand.
Severnside
Severnside, which has already been working with Tesco to cope with the supermarket chain's packaging waste, said the centres represented part of its diversification away from its core paper recycling business.
“The company is moving away from being just paper-based,” said commercial director Tony Watkins. “We're looking more at diverting from landfill now – we're setting up a network of service providers to deal with the materials we're not handling at our mills, and we've signed a two-year agreement with Comet and a three-year agreement with Next to handle around 40,000 tonnes of packaging waste.”
As well as taking 150 to 200 tonnes of cardboard packaging waste from Tesco, Severnside is now working with Waitrose to divert around 100 to 150 tonnes of plastic film from landfill each month.
Subscribe for free