Thefirst beverage carton recycling plant to be developed in the UK since 2006 hassecured its first customer.
Northern Irish recycling firm Bryson Recycling has agreed to supply cartons toa recyclingfacility being developed by The Alliance for Beverage Cartons & the Environment (ACE UK) – which represents carton manufacturers Tetra Pak, SIG Combibloc and Elopakand – alongside packaging manufacturer Sonoco Alcore(see letsrecycle.com story).
The plant is due to come online at Stainland, West Yorkshire, in early 2013.
Thefacility will have the capacity to process around 25,000 tonnes of cartons per year. As well as the material collected by Bryson Recycling, it will also process beverage cartons collected through bring banks owned by ACE UK.
Europe
No UK-based reprocessing facility has existed for beverage cartons since the closure of the Smith Anderson paper mill in Fife, Scotland in 2006. Instead, material has had to be exported to countries in Europe including Sweden and Italy for recycling and energy recovery.
Cartons reprocessed at the Halifax plant will be used to produce paperboard layers in consumer and industrial products such as cling film tubes and cores for rolls of textiles.
As part of the deal, Bryson Recycling will send bales of used beverage cartons collected from households in Newtonabbey, Ballymena and Carrickfergus to the Sonoco facility for reprocessing.
The cartons are collected via kerbside collections from 68,000 homes and sorted at Brysons materials recycling facility (MRF) in Belfast. Currently, the cartons are being processed at a facility in Sweden.
Approach
Eric Randall, director at Bryson Recycling, said: The ability to reprocess beverage cartons in the UK is great news for us and our local authority partners. At the heart of everything we do is the triple bottom line approach: social responsibility; environmental sustainability; and economic viability. Our agreement with ACE UK and Sonoco Alcore puts a big tick in all these boxes, so were delighted to be leading the pack as the first to sign-up.
ACE UK hopes that by creating a domestic market for beverage carton recycling more local authorities willing to accept the material in recycling collections, and claims that it is expecting several councils to do so by the end of 2013.
Fay Dashper, recycling operations manager at ACE UK, said: While collection coverage for beverage cartons is already high, we know from our discussions with local authorities that a UK-based reprocessing solution makes the switch to kerbside collections more appealing. Nevertheless, even we are surprised at the level of interest received from MRF operators in the plant and the UK-based market it creates for used beverage cartons.
This interest is testimony to the firm commitment of our members Tetra Pak, Elopak, and SIG Combibloc – to constantly improve the environmental performance of their beverage cartons. Were confident that by the end of year one (December 2013) a further ten local authorities will have started collecting cartons in their kerbside service, sending them to the new plant for recycling.
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