Call to Pak more punch into carton recycling

9:47am Thursday 28th August 2008

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A GREEN-THINKING Basingstoke councillor has hit out at the borough's failure to provide a collection and recycling point for cartons.

Currently, Tetra Paks, such as juice and sauce cartons, are not recycled in the borough - something Liberal Democrat councillor Gavin James wants to see change to help raise the borough's recycling rate and prevent it falling behind other local authorities.

According to Tetra Pak, which states it is a carbon-neutral company and offsets the carbon it produces, about 85 per cent of local authorities in the UK now provide residents with carton collection facilities. The cartons are then transported to processing plants where they are recycled into products including plasterboard.

While cartons often appear to be made of cardboard, they cannot be recycled alongside other paper-based waste in household green bins due to the fact they are made from a combination of paperboard, polyethylene and aluminium. It is estimated that the cartons make up about 0.7 per cent of waste in the county.

Cllr James said: "In the past three years, Tetra Pak recycling has developed at a pace and Basingstoke appears to have fallen behind other authorities.

"Introducing Tetra Pak bring banks' at existing recycling points would increase the range of products residents can recycle and improve our green credentials."

Councillor Anne Court, the council's Cabinet member for the environment and climate change, said one of the reasons why cartons are not collected for recycling in Basingstoke and Deane, which is part of Project Integra, a partnership of authorities in Hampshire that follow the same recycling guidelines, is because they cannot be recycled in the UK.

She said: "There are currently no facilities in the UK for recycling Tetra Paks and, in order for cartons to be recycled, they have to be transported to a reprocessing facility in Sweden.

"This results in additional costs, fuel-use and carbon emissions.

"Due to their relatively small volume, together with the cost and environmental impact associated with separating, collecting and transporting Tetra Paks to Sweden, Basingstoke and Deane follows Project Integra's stance that the most sustainable disposal option is to recover energy from them at energy-recovery facilities.

"Discussions with Tetra Pak are continuing to investigate options for establishing a UK processing facility, which could provide a more sustainable option for recycling Tetra Paks in the future."