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To increase the level of material recovery, UK recyclers and local authorities are implementing schemes to capture packs used on the go, in public spaces and events. Simeon Goldstein reports

Just over a week after football fans covered the streets of Manchester in beer cans and plastic bottles, following the UEFA Cup final, Coca-Cola launched its first on-the-go recycling scheme at a Surrey-based theme park (see page 4). The two events focused attention on a source of packaging material that the UK has been slow to engage with - products consumed away from the home.

Our estimate is that about 30,000 tonnes of aluminium cans are consumed on the go, says Rick Hindley, executive director of Alupro, the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation. Based on statistics from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for 2006, around a fifth of all aluminium packaging is, therefore, used in offices, leisure centres or shopping malls, for example. It’s a big priority for Alupro to crack the opportunity for material recovery that this represents, adds Hindley.

Likewise, plastics recycling body Recoup is keen to reduce the amount of plastic bottles thrown in public litter bins. The organisation estimates around 700 million bottles – some 25,000 tonnes – end up in public bins each year. In 2006, over 500,000 tonnes of plastic bottles entered the household waste stream, of which a quarter was recovered. Plastics don’t seem very much, but when you’ve got hundreds of them they take up a lot of space in landfill, says Recoup project manager Andy Newton.

Broader reach
In 2007’s Waste Strategy for England, the government said it wanted to extend the recycling culture to public places, and last autumn it held a consultation on guidance and a voluntary code for on-the-go facilities. Of the 78 respondents, mostly local authorities, 97% were in favour of public-use recycle bins, but said that implementation of a scheme should be on a voluntary basis, rather than through legislation.

Recycling compliance organisation Valpak in April launched a project in Glasgow, in conjunction with Danone and the city council, to collect used plastic bottles, drinks cans and newspapers people use when they’re out and about.

Around 40% of what goes into litter bins is potentially recyclable, and if we can pull that out we can capture high recycling rates, says Andrew McCaffery, Valpak director of business development. He says the scheme is on course to collect as much PET waste as is collected from households in Glasgow.

McCaffery recognises the potential difficulties in getting people to use the new bins. In previous attempts in Glasgow, other waste contaminated the recyclable waste, he says. The bins are very distinctive, and we’re looking at promoting the scheme in a number of information campaigns.

Recyclers reap rewards
Meanwhile, Recoup and GlaxoSmithKline have been trialling reverse-vending recycling (RVR) machines, which reward consumers for depositing their empty container, in shopping centres. The machines read the product’s bar code, compact it and store it for collection. If it does not recognise a particular product, then the machine stores the information electronically so it can be updated later.

The key factor with RVR machines is that the material is not contaminated, giving it a higher retail value, says Stephen Hall, chief executive of Reverse Vending Corporation, which supplies the machines. Hall says that despite longstanding use in continental Europe and the US, it is only in the past two years that there has been real uptake and interest in the UK.

Newton says that feedback on the trials has been positive, but warns it is important to have clear goals. If you look at some of Tesco’s schemes, the fact they give Clubcard points means some people bring waste from home and it’s no longer ‘on the go’. He also urges organisations that might consider implementing RVR to look at all the costs involved, which would need to include educating the users.

Cost is also important to local authorities, which could end up having to foot the bill for on-the-go schemes. The Local Government Association (LGA) responded to the government’s consultation by saying that funding must be part of the scheme. LGA policy consultant Alice Roberts adds: There are concerns over high costs for very little return in terms of diverting waste from landfill.

Alupro’s Hindley says it should be relatively easy to implement a scheme, because the bins would likely be in areas that kerbside collections already pass. The difficulty comes from the definition of waste and some local authorities are not collecting municipal waste because it doesn’t help targets, he says.

Ultimately the bigger challenge is likely to be public awareness. Newton says the government is starting to realise people behave differently at home than in public. There’s an element of litter not being their waste, and we need to change that perception and behaviour. It’s about public awareness. You could put 50 recycling bins in, but if they don’t look or feel different to the punters then it’s just another bin.

The mystery of the' missing' steel

While aluminium drinks cans are an important element of the waste stream, the smaller number of steel cans used on the go command less attention. Compared to the estimated 300,000 tonnes of steel packaging that are ‘missing’, the 10,000 tonnes of on the go material pales into insignificance, says David Williams, manager of Corus Steel Packaging Recycling.

Williams says, however, that people should be encouraged to recycle – it’s a positive habit to get into – and believes that waste contracts with schools and leisure centres could be tweaked to include an element of recycling rather than pure waste disposal.