Tetra Pak, Veolia partner on carton recycling project

Sweden-based food and drink packaging provider Tetra Pak and France-based environmental services firm Veolia say they have established a partnership that will seek to enable all components of used beverage cartons collected within the European Union to be recycled by 2025.

According to Veolia, the average beverage carton consists of about 75 percent paperboard, 20 percent plastic and five percent aluminum foil. While the fiber recovered during the recycling process has current end markets when converted into pulp, the same is not necessarily true for the recovered polymer and aluminum (PolyAl) mix.

Under the new partnership, the extracted PolyAl will be processed at dedicated facilities and converted into raw materials for applications within the plastic industry. By recycling the PolyAl, Veolia says the overall value of the used cartons is expected to double, making the value chain for collection and recycling more efficient and viable.

The Tetra Pak and Veolia partnership will start in the EU and expand to more markets around the world.

“All materials from beverage cartons can be fully recycled into something new and useful,” says Lisa Ryden, Tetra Pak’s recycling director. “Our approach to recycling involves working with many partners along the value chain, because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The challenge in the EU is to achieve the economies of scale and turn PolyAl into high-value secondary materials. With this partnership, we are combining our respective areas of expertise to find sustainable solutions for PolyAl recycling”

Comments Laurent Auguste, Veolia’s senior executive vice president of development, innovation and markets, “This partnership joins together our resource management expertise and Tetra Pak’s packaging material expertise. We will develop an environmentally and economically sustainable solution to recycling PolyAl, first in the EU, and then Asia, to improve collection, technology and processes. We are proud to embark on this journey with Tetra Pak to sustain and grow beverage carton recycling.”