Responding to recent concerns about the current difficulty of recycling its cartons, Tetra Pak told letsrecycle.com yesterday it has set aside a “substantial six-figure sum” in its budget to help councils introduce new collection schemes.
And, Tetra Pak UK environment manager Richard Hands said the company was now hoping to increase this budget for the new support programme, which is expected to start later this year.
” We recognise we have a major role in the absence of a green dot scheme in this country. “
– Richard Hands, Tetra Pak UK
Mr Hands said: “We recognise we have a major role in the absence of a green dot scheme in this country, and we recognise that cartons are not a significant tonnage in the market, so local authorities are not likely to prioritise collections.”
Tetra Pak has now recruited a national recycling officer – Nicola Mann – specifically to lead the programme, which could involve both local authorities and community groups. Mr Hands said: “In the UK right now that we're not at square one, but we're at an early stage.”
Increase
Over the past year, Mr Hands said 30 more local authorities have begun to collect Tetra Paks for recycling, with 40 councils now collecting in total. He said: “We are looking forward to an even bigger increase in the coming months.”
The company is currently aiming for a 10% recycling rate for its cartons by 2008. Mr Hands said recycling rates in continental Europe are much higher than in the UK, averaging 30%. However, as well as being subsidised by green dot producer responsibility systems, he said the recycling of Tetra Paks was made easier because of a higher usage of cartons on the continent.
Mr Hands explained: “Germany and places like that still put milk in cartons, rather than the plastic bottles used in the UK. Recycling rates in Germany are about 70% at the moment, and 72% in Belgium.”
With the new programme of support, he said Tetra Pak was confident it hit the 10% target for the UK.
Reprocessing
Cartons that are collected in the UK – along with production waste from Tetra Pak's Wrexham packaging plant, are currently sent to Scotland to be reprocessed by the only plant in the UK capable of recycling them. The Smith Anderson mill at Fettykil in Fife has the capacity to process 15,000 tonnes of carton waste, but is processing “a lot less than that at the moment”, Mr Hands said.
The Tetra Pak environment manager said there were hopes to extend reprocessing capacity in the UK, since he conceded “it is not ideal to truck material from the South of England to Scotland for reprocessing”.
While Tetra Pak is the largest producer of drinks cartons in this country, cartons made by other manufacturers can also be recycled at the Smith Anderson plant, which was part-funded by the carton industry trade association, the Liquid Food Carton Manufacturers
Association.
Of the carton material that is sent to the Fife plant, Mr Hands said about 77-78% was actually recycled – the paper content of the cartons – while remaining plastic and aluminium is sent to landfill. However, Mr Hands said the company was looking into small-scale processing plants that might be able to handle the non-paper fractions of the cartons.
| Related links: |
Mr Hands said: “We are working on three possibilities for extracting value from the plastic and aluminium, one possibility is a form of recycling, the other two involve energy-from-waste.
“It happens routinely in most countries in Europe now, but there they already have the economies of scale needed,” he explained.
Subscribe for free