Carton recycling

You can now recycle even more of your household rubbish with the introduction of a carton recycling scheme throughout the borough.

Recycling bins for paper-based liquid food and drink cartons, such as those used for fruit juice, sauces, milk and other liquid food/drink are available at eight loca recycling sites across Hertsmere in conjunction with Tetra Pak Ltd and the carton industry body ACE UK (Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment).

The bins can be found at:

• The Venue car park, Elstree Way, Borehamwood
• Andrews Close, off Porters Park Drive, Shenley
• Newberries car park, Watling Street, Radlett 
• Kemp Place car park, Kemp Place, Bushey
• Tesco, Mutton Lane, Potters Bar

This scheme means that cartons (such as those shown above) can now be recycled in Hertsmere instead of being put in the normal household waste and sent to landfill. Cartons should be washed and squashed before being placed in the bins. Plastic parts do not need to be removed. Plastic lids can also go in the bin, either separately or on the carton once it has been squashed. Unfortunately these liquid food and drink cartons cannot go in kerbside recycling collection boxes as our recycling plants cannot currently accept them.

Please do not put the following in the bin:

Where do they go and how are they recycled?

Once the cartons are collected from the sites they will be taken away to be baled and transported to a recycling mill in Europe. At present these facilities are not available in the UK, something the carton industry is working to change.

Recycling paper-based cartons is not as straightforward as recycling items such as cardboard and plastic bottles as they are made from three different materials which have to be separated before being re-used:

• Paperboard (typically 70-90%)
• Low-density polyethylene (typically 10-25%)
• Aluminium foil (about 5%, only in long life or aseptic packages)

Baled cartons are dropped into a pulper, similar to a giant domestic food mixer, filled with water and pulped for around 20 minutes. This delaminates the packaging, breaking down the package to produce a grey-brown slurry. The aluminium foil and polyethylene are separated from the fibre, which is recovered to make new paper products.

Wood fibres become shorter and lose some strength every time they are recycled, and can only be recycled about five times. This means that there always has to be an input of virgin material into the papermaking process to maintain quality.

Because of cartons' long, high-strength fibres, they reduce the need to buy virgin pulp. In the UK, the recovered fibre is used to manufacture new  high-strength products such as paper carrier bags and envelopes.

The non-fibre remainder, mainly polyethylene and a smaller amount of aluminium, have been used in other countries in a number of applications including garden furniture, playground design, roofing materials and for energy recovery in municipal incinerators and cement kilns.

For further information see www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk or contact Tetra Pak on 020 7839 4321.