Warwickshire News Mine

Warwickshire County Council, in partnership with Tetra Pak Ltd and the carton industry body ACE UK (Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment), is launching the new scheme to allow Warwickshire residents to recycle their cartons.

Each year, UK beverage carton manufacturers produce about 55,000 tonnes of paper-based cartons for milk, juice, sauces and other liquid foods/drinks.

This equates to around 2.3kg of cartons per household, which could be recycled instead of thrown in the rubbish bin. In response, Warwickshire County Council is working with the carton industry to introduce carton collection facilities at all nine of the Recycling Centres in the county for residents to take their empty cartons to be recycled.

Once collected they can be taken away to be baled and finally transported to a recycling mill. They can then be recycled into a number of different products, ranging from plasterboard liner to high-strength paper bags and envelopes.

Cllr Martin Heatley, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment, said: “The residents of Warwickshire have always responded well to the different recycling schemes we’ve implemented across the county, but we’ve still got some tough targets to meet, both as a county and as a nation. We’re delighted that Tetra Pak and the carton industry is supporting us to help increase the number of cartons recycled in our county and if the scheme is successful, we’d like to see the project rolled out further.”

Richard Hands, Environment Manager at Tetra Pak Ltd and Chairman of ACE UK, added: “While cartons have been successfully recycled in large volumes for many years throughout Europe, the UK has a long way to go. It’s therefore fantastic news that Warwickshire County Council is taking a lead by adding cartons to the list of materials collected for recycling and we very much hope that the initiative is successful. We, and our industry partners, are committed to increasing the level of carton recycling in the UK with the aim of reaching a national network of carton collection by the end of 2008.” 

Since April last year, the UK carton industry has made £1.5million available to help local authorities interested in starting up carton collection schemes in their area.

There are already approximately 100 district areas collecting cartons, which will result in a national network of coverage during the next 18 months. The carton industry continues to work with new paper mills to trial carton recycling to ensure the industry can cater for this increase in carton recycling, as more areas come on board.

For more information call 01926 412593 or visit http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/waste.  For more information on beverage carton recycling, visit http://www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk.

Link to WCC