Circle of life

5 November 2010



Joanne Hunter hears from Mario Abreu, Director, Forestry and Recycling, at Tetra Pak about the company’s efforts to close the carton loop across Europe and the world.


What goes around comes around. The material in cartons that sit on a store shelf will another day be used in a transit container or for drying wet hands.

Mario Abreu is an important figure behind Tetra Pak’s ambition to recycle an increasingly large proportion of the cartons it puts on the market around the world. He reveals some of the secrets of his company’s success to date.

“In every country we first assess what fosters the recycling of cartons. In the UK, Tetra Pak works with local and national governments, retailers, the recycling industry, and other businesses,” he says.

“We also work more broadly to develop and support new technologies, which helps increase recycling capacities for used cartons and thus drives demand for those cartons. We invest in promotional campaigns to raise awareness among consumers: recycling is everyone's responsibility and this collaborative approach is paying off.

“In China we partner with recyclers, schools, non-governmental organisations, collection entities and local governments to establish a sustainable value chain for carton packaging collection and recycling. The recycling rate grew from almost zero in 2004 to around 12% in 2009.

“In Thailand we co-sponsored a nationwide carton collection and recycling campaign with a popular TV programme and more than 21 million beverage cartons were recycled into notebooks and donated to schools. Another example is Egypt, where for the past five years we've partnered with NGOs, paper traders, and paper mills to stimulate recycling by creating awareness and supporting the development of recyclers. As a result, the recycling rate has gone from 0% to 13% of all cartons sold.

“For more than five years we've been running technology trials at paper mills around the world to inform them and enable them to recycle our cartons.

“Recyclability is also a core performance measure at each stage of Tetra Pak’s innovation process and product development.”

The kind of recovery, material reclamation and reuse systems that are favoured are many and varied.

“Collected used beverage cartons end up mostly at paper mills, be it in the USA, Germany, Brazil, India or China. The high quality fibres we use to make cartons become a great source of the strong fibres needed to produce a range of paper products - from packaging boards to towels.

“There are several technologies for recycling the non-fibre content of our cartons to new products, either as agglomerated material (for household items like brooms and pens, transportation pallets, plastics lumbers and road poles, for example); or processes separating the polymers from the aluminium and transforming them into paraffin waxes and aluminium flakes, respectively.”

Non-standardised waste collection schemes, although they create a barrier for Tetra Pak where they exist, are being improved by working with every known group that has a stake in achieving higher recycling figures.

“Non-standardised waste collection schemes create some challenges, but we are working with stakeholders everywhere we operate to enable the cartons we manufacture to be recycled in every market after use,” continues Mr Abreu.

“We work with industry, public authorities, NGOs, industry groups and community associations such as the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment UK (ACE) in the EU, CEMPRE in Brazil and Argentina, and Sustenta in Mexico. For example, just three years ago, there was very little collection of beverage cartons for recycling in the UK, primarily because government targets are predominantly weight based and local authorities could fulfil their targets more quickly by promoting the recycling of other, heavier materials first. In fact, only 20% of all local authority areas were collecting cartons for recycling as of June 2007.

“Tetra Pak has been investing and working to help local authorities set up recycling and collection facilities. Today, most local authority areas across the UK collect cartons for recycling and Tetra Pak is helping them to find ways to move to kerbside collection where possible.”


Mario Abreu â–  Home country: Brazil â–  Joined Tetra Pak in Canada in 1999 â–  Board member of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC International) and of the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and Environment (ACE) â–  2006-08 Co-chair for the steering Mario Abreu

Mario Abreu Mario Abreu


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