Glasgow hosts ‘on the go’ packaging recycling pilot

The 12-month Glasgow Recycles pilot will be led by Valpak, and also involves the Waste Aware Scotland campaign, Volvic bottled water, Glasgow City Council and Glasgow-based social enterprise the Wise Group.

Valpak will place 15 recycling points in "high-volume traffic" locations around the city. Each recycling bank will hold 1.2 cubic metres of waste, which will be sorted, baled and recycled at Glasgow City Council's materials reclamation facility at Polmadie.

The scheme, which could be extended to other cities across the UK, will create employment for three unemployed Glasgow residents.

These three people will take a 12-month training programme, with the opportunity for full-time employment. One will raise public awareness of the scheme, while the other two will be based at the plastics sorting line at Polmadie and monitor the number of plastic bottles being recycled.

David Graham, strategic development director for Volvic brand owner Danone Waters, said that although all of the firm's bottles were 100% recyclable, there was no national recycling scheme in the UK and levels of recycling were currently "very low".

"By working with local councils to improve levels of PET recovery and recycling through schemes such as this we can encourage consumers to recycle bottles where possible and make a difference to the volume of recycled PET that is available to use," he said.

Valpak director of business development Andrew McCaffery said a steering group would monitor how much waste was being recycled on a monthly basis. A lifecycle assessment will be carried out at the end of the pilot.

McCaffery said Glasgow had been chosen to host the pilot scheme because Valpak had a good relationship with Glasgow City Council and the council had the infrastructure in place to support the project.

Glasgow City Council recycles more than 65,000 tonnes of material each year.

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