Taking stock of sustainability: Ring carrier supplier partners with TerraCycle

20 Mar 2019 --- Hi-Cone, a manufacturer of ring carriers for the beverage industry, has become the first non-branded company to partner with TerraCycle. According to the British Plastics Federation (BPF), 99 percent of local authorities in the UK collect plastic bottles at the kerbside and 76 percent collect pots, tubs and trays, yet few local authorities collect and recycle other items such as ring carriers. By partnering with TerraCycle, the manufacturer hopes that ring carriers can be recycled, instead of sent to landfill or incinerated. The partnership follows a number of TerraCycle collaborations between notable brands including Kellogg’s and Colgate.

“Small, light and flexible materials like ring carriers are hard to separate from the other materials collected by municipal systems. In turn, collecting the meaningful volumes required for economies of scale can be quite challenging. Often, this is why municipal systems in the UK don’t accept them,” Stephen Clarke, Head of Communications at TerraCycle Europe, tells PackagingInsights.

Hi-Cone and TerraCycle are spearheading their efforts to tailor recycling techniques to individual waste streams where specialist beverage packaging is concerned, ensuring ring carriers can be collected and recycled, giving them a new life post-use in park benches and fences, for example.

Clarke notes that TerraCycle could manage a process by which the plastic ring carriers are recycled back into new plastic packaging. However, “these types of closed-loop recycling applications require the buy-in of the packaging manufacturer so that they are willing to buy, and can use, the processed material in their supply chain.”

“For the time being – until collection volumes scale and a packaging manufacturer shows interest in this type of project – our process is to recycle the material into our standard downstream applications which, for low-density polyethylene (LDPE) products like the plastic ring carriers, typically include things like park benches, outdoor furniture and composite lumber,” he adds.

The main aim of the initiative, which is reportedly the first of its kind globally, is to educate and encourage consumers to recycle ring carriers via simple and hassle-free channels. Consumers can search online for their nearest dedicated collection point, or can sign up as a private collector and download freepost labels to send their used ring carriers in for recycling.

“We are excited to launch this new initiative with TerraCycle which means that our product is now fully recyclable in the UK. Moving forward, our goal is to recover and reuse as many plastic ring carriers as possible worldwide, and the TerraCycle partnership helps us to achieve that,” says T. Kenneth Escoe, President Hi-Cone. 

“Hi-Cone has long been dedicated to reducing its environmental impact and this latest project forms part of a broader strategy that will ensure ring carriers are 100 percent recyclable or compostable by 2025,” adds Escoe.

“It is vital that packaging producers take the lead in pushing sustainable programs forward, and that is why we have stepped in at this stage of our journey to champion this process with TerraCycle. We will monitor the progress of this initiative very closely as it rolls out in the UK, and then assess the possibility of widening its scope further into Europe, the US and beyond,” he adds. 

TerraCycle’s growing list of partners
The new recycling scheme, which will commence in May 2019, aims to create a UK-wide network of public access ring carrier recycling points. Community groups and individual consumers are encouraged to set up locations for their communities where the public can drop off ring carriers post-use, which can be sent, free of charge, to TerraCycle for recycling. It joins an expanding list of companies that are partnering with the recycling organization to reduce waste.

“To date, we have some 80 million people engaged in collecting waste materials across 21 countries and typically these programs are funded by brands or municipalities. It is, therefore, very refreshing to have a packaging manufacturer such as Hi-Cone engaging with us and taking responsibility for the materials it sends into circulation. We have a shared responsibility to close the material loop and we would encourage more packaging producers to work with us and to follow the example Hi-Cone is setting,” says Laure Cucuron, General Manager, at TerraCycle percent Europe. 

In 2019, it will be increasingly important for FMCG companies and suppliers to work with recycling organizations to establish functional circular economies which minimize waste.  

It was announced at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in January that TerraCycle was set to launch a first-of-its-kind reusable packaging home delivery service in partnership with a host of global brands. 

The Loop program is a global packaging and shopping circular solution which aims to offer improved environmental performance compared to current e-commerce solutions. The basic premise of the initiative is that consumers will order their product, receive it via shipping, then after use the packaging will be picked up at their homes. The products are then cleaned, refilled and either reused or recycled. Available products range from detergent and toothbrushes to ice cream and peanut butter. The platform is expected to launch in Paris and New York in the spring of 2019.

TerraCycle has also partnered with a range of companies to solve their recycling issues with “difficult” products, including oral care products from Colgate, contact lenses from Johnson & Johnson, Pringles from Kellogg’s and bread bags from Hovis.

By Laxmi Haigh