The latest polls have shown that UK local authorities are now providing 85% of carton recycling collection facilities. Tetra Pak national recycling operations manager Fay Dashper has referred to increase as “huge progress”.
Tetra Pak is certainly one of the entities that made the dramatic increase possible. In 2006, Tetra Pak gave £300,000 to local councils to fund used carton collection schemes. At the time, approximately 40 local authorities had used carton collection schemes in place. In 2007, Tetra Pak co-founded a £1.2 million national recycling fund along with the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE UK), with the hopes of increasing the number of participants.
Dashper told MRW that local authorities that operate energy-from-waste facilities (approximately 4%) are not likely apt to introduce carton collections. However that still left about 49 local authorities who were still disposing of cartons by sending them to a landfill.
“Authorities not yet covered include Cumbria, Cornwall, Buckinghamshire and Kent and these are all waste partnership areas where the decision mechanism is not as quick,” Dashper said.
“We would love to get the remaining waste partnerships on board and see local authorities move to kerbside collection and UK processing capacity to improve so that we are able to deal with this on our own shores,” she added.
There have been test loads of cartons being sent for processing to UK mills, yet the majority is still being sent to Norway or Sweden processing. Dashper confirmed that councils UK only recycling policies have balked against launching used carton recycling schemes. Dashper stated that the UK is not yet ready for such a large undertaking, “until we know we can do it on a large scale and it is sustainable”.
To learn more, go to: tetrapak.com
|
|
