Tetra Pak collection trial not going to plan in Norfolk

Residents don't understand what can be placed in the bins, the council has found.

” I would say that of the sites (involved in the scheme) only one has been successful “
– Dan Jacobs, Norfolk council
With the help of funding from Tetra Pak, the council has placed collection bins for drink cartons in five of its household waste recycling centres.

Very few councils in the UK actually offer collections, at kerbside or at CA sites, of the Tetra Pak cartons.

Norfolk's collected cartons are bulked by local haulage company Pearson's and delivered to Smith Anderson and Co's carton recycling plant at Fettykil in Fife. The trial is set to run for six months.

Contamination

So far the trial has not been seen as a success by the council and high levels of contamination have been recorded, according to recycling supervisor Dan Jacobs.

Mr Jacobs told letsrecycle.com: “I would say that of the sites only one has been successful, there has been a large amount of contamination. Most of the rogue material has come from plastic bottles, we don't have collection points for the bottles available at the sites.”

He explained that the signage on the banks tells users that the bins are for “Liquid cartons”, rather than “tetra paks” and he believes that people assume that this can include plastic bottles.

Difficult

Tetra cartons are made from a combination of aluminium, paper and plastic – which makes it difficult to recycle. Tetra Pak is encouraging the collection of the cartons nationwide for reprocessing at the Fife plant.

The council has said that residents have no option for recycling cartons and the material takes up a lot of space in residents' bins.

Mr Jacobs added: “There will be a reassessment of the trial in a month's time and we may have to change the signs to ensure residents are not confused.”

Norfolk has decided against having plastic bottle banks at its sites because five of the seven district councils in the county collect plastic as part of their kerbside recyclable collections.

However one bank at Ketteringham on the outskirts of Norwich where the city council does not offer kerbside plastic bottle collections – will receive a plastic bottle bank in an attempt to stem the contamination.