Hi folks, Alex here. In a previous video, we talked about how Tetra Pak’s cartons
are made, the sustainability challenges they face as a packaging company and how they are
addressing them. The biggest one is that Tetra Pak depends on their cartons being recycled
so in this video we will focus on recycling. Like the first one, this video was sponsored
by Tetra Pak but I am still doing my best to make it a rigorous sustainability review.
A Tetra Pak carton is made of several layers of paperboard (fibre), polyethylene and aluminum
foil and sometimes a plastic cap. There are various methods for separating the different
layers of a carton in the recycling stream. So, there are two ways to look at recycling
a carton: 1) as a whole and 2) as two streams: fibre on one side and a mix of polyethylene
and aluminum on the other side.
Used cartons can make valuable materials for new, everyday products. Compacted into sheets
in a hot press, cartons can be made into building material that can be used for roofing and
wall systems. The other option is for cartons to go into a pulper - which is a machine you
can think of as a giant blender - that separates the fibre (paperboard) from the aluminum/polyethylene
mix, the fibre then goes into the paper recycling stream to make paper products such as tissue
paper, toilet paper, plant containers, cup holders, etc. The aluminum/polyethylene mix
on the other hand can be turned into new composite products such as benches, rulers, folders,
mouse pads, etc.
Again, the challenge is that Tetra Pak depends on consumers to have access to carton recycling,
which ultimately is up to local recycling municipalities.
As I was visiting Tetra Pak, we went to a local MRF (Materials Recovery Facility). I
won’t get into the details of how it works but you can watch the video in the description
for more details, it is quite interesting. In a nutshell, trucks at the facility dump
giant piles of materials and these go through a series of machines to sort them out until
we have the cardboard in one pile, the glass in another, plastics in another, etc.
Here is something I did not know. For your cartons to be recycled properly here in North
America, you should not flatten them before putting them in your recycling bin. Who knew,
hey? And here is why: one of the machines in the MRF has a bunch of rotating discs that
are designed to separate flat paper from cartons based on their size and shape. So, to ensure
your carton is properly sorted, it must be in it's original three-dimensional carton
shape. This is the kind of thing that we all need to learn for recycling to work properly,
for Tetra Pak cartons, but also for everything else.
This is why Tetra Pak works at educating their customers (meaning the food and beverage companies
that distribute products into Tetra Pak cartons) to improve the recycling of cartons. For instance,
when Tetra Pak has encouraged their customers to include the “recyclable” logo on their
cartons, in some places, it has doubled the recycling ratio of the cartons (I know, I
do that too, I check the packaging to make sure that something can be recycled). Tetra
Pak collaborates with competitors though the “Carton Council” in the US and in Canada
to improve access to carton recycling. They also support innovation and invest into new
technologies such as robotic systems in a handful of MRFs that can help better sort
cartons.
The good news is: Carton recycling access has increased by 350% over the past 10 years.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done since only 61% of households in the US
had access to recycling in 2019 and the carton recycling rate was only 16%. This is a good
reminder: if we want to enjoy the convenience and food safety benefits of a Tetra Pak carton
or any other container, we all need to make sure we do our part and put it in a recycling
bin after using it.
I will be back with more sustainability tools in video.
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And as usual, thank you for watching.