The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE) is helping to boost UK carton recycling and grow the country's domestic recycling infrastructure by opening the country's first carton recycling facility near Halifax, Yorkshire.
The association, which helps Europe's major food and drink carton manufacturers to take collective action on reducing the sector's impact on the environment, partnered with coreboard and packaging producer Sonoco Alcore to create the new plant. Its aim was to provide local authorities with a greener, more cost-effective route to recycle cartons and improve UK carton recycling rates.
Opened in September 2013, the new recycling facility receives used cartons from local authorities and transforms them into industrial-strength coreboard on site, for use in construction and other industries. The facility is capable of recycling up to 40% of the cartons manufactured annually for the UK food and drink market – that is 25,000 tonnes or 1.25bn cartons.
Sonoco Alcore stands to create 15,500 tonnes of new coreboard annually, which is enough to make 17.7m recyclable standard-sized cores.
Five months after the recycling facility opened, 12 more local authorities had introduced kerbside collections, bringing the proportion of UK councils making kerbside carton collections to 56%. Including the authorities collecting cartons via recycling banks, 40% of all authorities are now sending them to the recycling facility.
The advent of a carton recycling facility in the UK cuts road and rail miles to recycling plants in Europe, and gives councils with no-export policies the ability to recycle cartons rather than sending them to energy-from-waste plants or landfill. It also means authorities receive a stable price per tonne of cartons.
Expanding the UK's recycling infrastructure will boost the national economy and, as demand for sustainable packaging grows, give councils, manufacturers, retailers and consumers a clearer view of where and how their waste is being recycled.
Katharine Earley is a journalist and copywriter, specialising in sustainability.
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