United Kingdom – A 10-year deal between the Alliance for Beverage Cartons & the Environment (ACE UK) and Sonoco Alcore will see beverage cartons reprocessed at the recycler’s paper mill in Halifax – the first such facility to operate in the UK since the closure of the Smith Anderson paper mill in Fife, Scotland, in 2006.
Cartons are slated to be reprocessed at the plant from 2013 onwards, with the facility to recycle annually approximately 25 000 tonnes sorted from both household and commercial waste streams. Sonoco informs that the material handled at the Halifax plant will be used to create paperboard layers in consumer and industrial products – for example, cling film tubes and cores for rolls of textiles.
According to ACE UK, it intends to provide most of the material through its nationwide bring bank scheme, involving major manufacturers such as Tetra Pak, SIG Combibloc and Elopak. Richard Hands, Chief Executive of ACE UK, notes: ‘This decision underlines the firm commitment of our members to constantly improve the environmental performance of their beverage cartons. The already-low carbon footprint will become even lower; valuable materials will go back into reprocessed in this country.’
These bring banks fulfil the sector’s needs only as an ‘interim measure’, it adds. Now the market to process the material has started to get back on its feet – meaning the carton no longer has to be exported to other European countries such as Sweden and Italy – it hopes more councils will join in the recycling effort.
‘We are confident that, by December 2013, a further 10 local authorities will have started collecting cartons in their kerbside service, sending them to the new mill for recycling by ACE UK and Sonoco Alcore,’ states Mr Hands. He bases this partly on a recent ACE UK survey in which up to 58% of UK adults expressed a desire to recycle, especially if their used food and drink cartons were to be used in the domestic industry.
For more information, visit: www.ace-uk.co.uk
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