Home Sustainability Focus areas Circularity & recycling Our approach to recycling and circularity

Our approach to recycling and circularity

  • Ensuring that our cartons are designed to be effectively recycled at scale in state-of-the-art industrial infrastructure 
  • Convincing local authorities and PROs (packaging recovery organisations) to mandate the collection for recycling of cartons with all other packaging for liquid food
  • Co-investing with partners in new recycling capacities for cartons
    Increasing our capabilities to drive market demand for recycled fibres and recycled polyAl1
  • Gradually increasing the recycled content in our packaging, with the ambition to close the loop

Worldwide collaboration

 

Our 70 recycling experts across the world collaborate every day with recyclers, local authorities, and food and beverage manufacturers to ensure that materials from our packaging re-enter the economy at the end of their use by working on expanding industrial recycling solutions and pulling market demand for quality recycled material (paper pulp, plastics compounds) produced from cartons.

Expert employee working on expanding industrial recycling solutions.

From fibre to valuable product

 

Today, cartons collected for recycling are sent to papermills, which recover the fibre, separating the polyAl. The fibre is then recycled into several different types of paper materials such as tissue paper, office paper, and cardboard.

 

Then, the polyAl can be sent to other facilities that will recycle it by using different technologies to create valuable products such as pellets, panels, profiles, and tiles. 

PolyAI sustainable building material passing through open hands.

Global effort of collecting and recycling

 

Carton packages are currently being collected for recycling in more than 70 countries worldwide with a range of collection and recycling solutions reflecting the maturity of the individual market. Since 2010, we have increased the number of facilities that recycle cartons from 40 to more than 200.

Map

Expanding infrastructure

 

We have a close collaboration with partners across the world to expand recycling capacity for cartons, both the paper and polyAl materials. We are leading member in global and regional industry initiatives aimed to boost collection and recycling infrastructure. 

Handshake over expanding recycling capacity for cartons.

Related links

1PolyAl is the non-fibre fraction of a carton package made up of polymer and aluminium.