tetra pak petition your council

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Our council Haringey, does, in fact they recycle pretty much everything. Plastic paper, cans etc and they collect from the door. After many years they have finally go their act together! :T
I just hope they don't ship everything to a 3rd world country for recycling though! :eek:

BTW Tetra packs were very difficult to recycle until recently. This is because of the combination of aluminium, plastic and card that is bonded together. But a Brazilian invention using gas plasma to separate plastic and metal addressed this problem.

melancholly

http://www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk/04.htm
my council doesn't - but hopefully with some more prodding!

Lillibet_2

Interesting fact : Apparently there is only one tetrapack recycling plant in the whoel of the country, in Fife. It recently closed it doors & said no more for the forseeable future due to being inundated! This makes me wonder what councils are doing with them now? Are they shipping them abroad to be recycled (I think Holland has very good facilities for them?) or are they shipping them abroad & dumping them in Nigeria & the like as per that expose programme a few months ago which revealed several councils as being shockingley irresponsible?

Wig

Lillibet wrote:

Interesting fact : Apparently there is only one tetrapack recycling plant in the whoel of the country, in Fife. It recently closed it doors & said no more for the forseeable future due to being inundated! This makes me wonder what councils are doing with them now? Are they shipping them abroad to be recycled (I think Holland has very good facilities for them?) or are they shipping them abroad & dumping them in Nigeria & the like as per that expose programme a few months ago which revealed several councils as being shockingley irresponsible?

That's why I asked the question, I am emailing councils which do to ask what they do with the product.

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Odds on it goes to the developing world to be sorted by underpaid, underaged workers.
I'm thinking it would be better just to trow them in the regular trash if this is the case

kittiwoz

Perhaps we should be demanding and end to the tetra-pak then. I did think about mentioning this in the thread on what really annoys you where someone mentioned that Persil used to sell a carton refill pack of washing up liquid but it had been replaced by plastic bottles and that Persil said this was more environmentally friendly. The poster felt that this was an example of manufacturers unnecessarily increasing packaging but in fact Persil's cliam has some basis since the refill would have been a tetra-pack or similar plastic lined cardboard which would be not be seperable for recycling whereas the plastic bottle could be recycled. Although plastics recycling is not terribly economical it seems it's better that the tetra-pak which is why there are more facilities for recycling plastics than cartons. While you would think that cartons such as tetra-pak could be made from recycled board they are not. Tetra-pak is made largely from eucalyptus and pine plantations in Brazil. These are described as a "sustainably managed" renewable resouce but the environmental friendliness and ethical credentials of such large non-native plantations in rainforest areas often previously held as common land by now displaced native tribes is rather dubious.

Wig

In France they have washing up refils and washing liquid refils in 500ml thin film plastic tubes with a U shaped bit on the end where you snip it open and pour into your bottle.

These plastic tubes are like little balloons and seem to me to be a very good way of minimizing packaging, France has had these for at least 25 years!

pww2004

Derwentside (County Durham) has started accepting tetra paks for recycling when we went to twin bins last month

MORPH3US

After contacting Stafford council and being quite negative about the fact they don't do it, they told me they are "trialing" it in certain areas and hope to roll out soon!

Fingers crossed!

M

lynzpower

Not for us yet here in tower hamlets although TBH it sort of looks like they do on the photos on the leaflets, so Ive been sending them

But will raise it in the enviro forum next week