Sonoco recycles EnviroCan scrap materials

Sonoco, Hartsville, South Carolina, has expanded its recycling efforts by using scrap materials from production of its EnviroCan paper containers in the U.S. as raw material at three of its uncoated recycled paperboard mills to produce new paperboard.

Elizabeth Rhue, Sonoco’s staff vice president of sustainability, says the company expects to divert from landfills about 3,300 tons of scrap materials annually from four of its U.S. paper container operations in West Chicago, Illinois; Greenville, Wisconsin; Jackson, Tennessee; and Norwalk, California. She says this material, which is projected to equal about 165 truckloads, will be sent to Sonoco paper mills in Menasha, Wisconsin; Newport, Tennessee; and City of Industry, California, where it will be used as raw material to produce 100 percent recycled paperboard with up to 85 percent postconsumer fiber.

“Sonoco is uniquely positioned as a leading recycler, paper mill operator and packaging converter to help deliver end-of-life solutions across our consumer and industrial packaging platforms. We are taking the lead to further demonstrate our ability to recycle our paper containers with metal ends not only through the steel stream, as they are largely done today, but also through the paper stream. And we look forward to growing consumer access to increase recycling of our paper cans through postconsumer recycling streams,” Rhue says.

Tim Davis, division president and general manager of Sonoco’s U.S./Canada paper operations, says this collaboration across Sonoco’s U.S. vertically integrated manufacturing network demonstrates the flexibility the company has to recycle and process fiber-based packaging through conventional paper mill pulping systems.