Recycling technologies

Most of the beverage cartons recycled worldwide are recycled into paperboard for cardboard boxes and paper for office supplies. Other paper grades produced from recycled beverage cartons include tissue papers, paper towels and writing papers.

Paper Mills

Over a hundred paper mills around the world recycle post-consumer beverage cartons.  They vary in terms of size and type of production. The paper mill that recycled the most cartons in 2007 is Papierfabrik Niederauer Muhle – PNM, in Western Germany.  It recycles about 100,000 tonnes of cartons every year – the equivalent of 500 million beverage cartons.

Other champions in beverage carton recycling are Corenso Varkaus in Finland, Klabin Piracicaba in Brazil, and Stora Enso Barcelona, in Spain.

But successful recycling isn't limited to huge quantities – small operations, or those with access to fewer beverage cartons can successfully recycle too. 

New Technologies

We are also looking into new technologies specifically for extracting the best value from the non-paper portions of the beverage cartons, which can't be used by paper mills. We facilitate the exchange of information and the technological developments necessary to make value-adding technologies available.  This ensures growth of recycling in a sound business manner. 

One interesting development is a plant using plasma technology in Piracicaba, Brazil. Another plant using low-temperature pyrolysis will start in Barcelona, Spain during 2008/2009.  Both technologies allow for production of paraffinic oils and high-quality aluminium. These new technologies complement existing mechanical recycling plants worldwide, and a gasification plant which started up in Finland in 2000 that produces energy and secondary aluminium powders.

Recovery

The selection of the best waste management method and technology depends very much upon local conditions (transport distances, collection systems, markets for the recovered material, legislation, etc.).  In some countries cartons are required to be used for their energy value (e.g. Denmark). This has the advantage of being a renewable form of energy due to the package's material composition, very low carbon, and efficiency in terms of collection.  In other countries, collection norms are dictated either by law (for example, Germany) or by culture (for example India). 

However, in many countries there is no infrastructure for managing household waste usefully, and it is sent to landfill instead.