Veolia delivers sweet sustainability with plastic wrapper and straw recycling solution

03 Oct 2019 --- Global resource management company Veolia has launched a new service in the UK that recycles harder-to-treat materials, including sweet wrappers, straws and plastic toys. The Procycle service makes separate material containers available in public spaces and works through a post-back system where the materials are processed in Veolia’s recycling facility. The material is then sent to Veolia’s network of reprocessors in the UK and Europe to be turned into new products such as garden furniture, plant pots or even a replacement for virgin plastic.

“We don’t want to let recycling leave a bitter taste in people’s mouths. So now when you are sucking on your rhubarb and custard you can be confident that your wrapper could be recycled. Likewise, if you are slurping your smoothie through a straw or just clearing out the house of toys, you can know they are being transformed into new products,” comments Richard Kirkman, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for Veolia UK & Ireland.

This new solution is designed to tackle the 1 billion kilograms of sweets consumed each year; 1.4 million tons of textiles sent to landfill per annum; and 4.5 million straws every year. Procycle is launching in the UK, but the aim is to extend it across the world.

Sweet wrappers, plastic straws and other small plastic items are notoriously hard-to-recycle. “All these items are made from slightly different materials, grades, colors and to different specifications. When they all get mixed up they are difficult to separate into the same materials again,” Kirkman tells PackagingInsights. “To improve this we need to find ways of grouping the same material together.”

Procycle relies mainly on proven mechanical recycling technology as opposed to chemical recycling, which Kirkman believes “isn't yet proven.” Procycle is effective because it collects and sorts items for recycling separately.

Recycled plastic: Supply and demand
Notably, Veolia’s new recycling program is capable of converting some small plastic items into virgin plastic to help facilitate the growing demand for recycled content. In the UK, the government is set to impose a plastic tax that will require manufacturers to include 30 percent recycled content in new plastic packaging.

Some industry players have voiced concerns around the cost-effectiveness and accessibility of recycled plastics, but this is an opinion Kirkman refutes.

“It’s a demand-led industry, and Veolia does not produce more recycled plastic feedstock than it is asked to make. There’s a bit of mythology around ‘there’s not enough capacity.’ When there was a tax imposed on landfill, people started building recycling centers and it is the same with recycled PET (rPET) – Veolia will not just make it on the off chance that someone might use it, but if we can see that people will use it because of the regulatory changes, then we will invest the hundreds of millions in the packaging plants to produce the feedstock.”

Kirman believes that the UK Plastics Tax will help drive demand. “The day that it was announced we immediately had people knocking on our door asking ‘have we got any supply?’ Before that it didn’t happen, but the announcement of the plastics tax alone has already started to move people.”

Sweet success
As consumer and regulatory demand for increased sustainability in packaging continue to grow, some sweet and confectionery brands are choosing to replace hard-to-recycle plastic wrappers with paper alternatives.

Notable innovations include Nestlé YES! snack bars, which became “the first confectionary bar on the market” to be packaged in paper using a high-speed flow wrap technology in July. The paper wrappers are supplied by fiber-based packaging specialist Sappi. Similarly, Nestlé Japan is replacing the plastic wrapping on its KitKat candy bars with paper across five KitKat multipack products from September 2020 and across all individual products in 2021.

While in the Easter Egg category, British chocolate company Montezumas has responded to the plastic-out, paper-in trend. Following the 2018 launch of its Eco Egg – a product that uses post-consumer industrial waste for its packaging – Montezumas has taken the plastic windows out of its Nutty Hen Egg packaging and Cheeky Bunnies. The trays inside are also made from recycled plastics, in addition to being fully recyclable. The company has also incorporated plastic-free packaging in its Giant Bunnies product.

According to a Censuswide survey, 6 out of 10 people said they were prepared to pay extra for Easter eggs that had more environmentally-friendly packaging, with nearly three quarters (76 percent) of Millennials prepared to pay a premium for such a product. Significantly, 91 percent of UK adults would prefer to purchase an Easter egg predominantly packaged in carton/cardboard rather than plastic.

By Joshua Poole