Tetra Pak has announced a partnership with LoveNZ to enable New Zealanders to recycle their cartons and coffee cups, as well their cans and plastic bottles, outside of their homes.
Tetra Pak has been working closely with LoveNZ, a leading recycling advocate, to achieve this ambitious change. LoveNZ raise awareness of recycling amongst the community and provide strategically placed bins around the country.
Environment manager for Tetra Pak Oceania, Cheryl Speechley said: “Recycling is not an option for Tetra Pak, it is an obligation. We work actively to facilitate the expansion of carton recycling, and recycling success is one of the measures we use to assess management performance.”
Currently, around 384 million paper based containers are consumed every year in New Zealand. While cartons are collected via kerbside systems in several regions of New Zealand, until now there has been no responsible choice for consumers when they are away from home.
The expansion of the LoveNZ public place recycling system to include cartons and cups (in Auckland and Christchurch only initially) was the result of collaboration between Tetra Pak and stakeholders including, Huhtamaki, Coca Cola, BP, Visy Recycling, and Transpacific Industries Group (NZ) Ltd.
Once the cartons and cups are collected, they are baled and shipped to recycling mills in Australia, India and Korea. They are then soaked in water to separate the paper from the plastic and/or aluminium layers, and the content is turned into products like cardboard boxes toilet paper, tissue and notebooks. The separated aluminium foil can be made into roof tiles and plastic pots, or gasified to make energy.
Speechley continued: “This initiative reinforces Tetra Pak’s strong commitment to sustainability and deep relationship with leading community organisations. We are committed to continue working together to expand the collection to additional regions.”
