Tesco, Kellogg and the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE UK) are undertaking a Carton recycling points will be introduced into eleven Tesco stores in England and Wales to test how prepared customers are to return the packaging to stores for recycling. Cartons are commonly used to pack products such as fruit juice, lunch box sized drinks, soups, passata and custard yet only 68% of councils collect the packaging at kerbside.
This trial comes as a part of Tesco’s 4R plan for packaging – Remove, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and builds on ACE UK’s national carton bring bank network. Tesco’s Head of Packaging James Bull said, “We are overhauling our packaging by removing unnecessary and non-recyclable packaging from our business and will make sure everything we use can be recycled continuously. Inconsistency in the UK’s recycling infrastructure remains a problem and it is vital that the Government quickly implements its plans for collection across councils. In the meantime, we will test new in-store recycling facilities for packaging such as cartons to see if we can improve recycling rates.”
The new carton recycling points can also be used as a short-term recycling solution for Pringles. Kellogg, the company that owns the snacks brand, has committed to improving the recyclability of the Pringles tube so they can be recycled in household collections and is also testing a ‘widely recyclable’ paper packaging solution.
ACE UK represents the UK’s leading beverage carton manufacturers, Tetra Pak, Elopak and SIG Combibloc. The industry body has run the beverage carton industry’s recycling programme for over 12 years and the trial will use its specialist recycling facility at Stainland, near Halifax. Opened in 2013, the facility was set up as a dedicated beverage carton recycling plant and as part of the trial will process Pringles tubes alongside cartons.
