The recylced packaging papers can be reused by paper mills for pulping, new materials or production of corrugated packaging. Use of such corrugated packaging can maximise efficiencies throughout supply chain including disposal. Apart from that, the process is highly cost-effective.
With the increasing problems and conflicts in waste disposal, the reuse of packaging has even made a positive impact on the consumers and manufacturers alike. Most of the eco-friendly consumers prefer using products with recyclable and recycled packaging. In Kathmandu alone, 82% of the students among 5000 surveyed said that they either avoid excessive packaging or prefer using recyclable packaging. Our maket, however, still needs to focus on producing corrugated packaging from recycled papers and promote reusable packaging.
When making a decision on buying-in packaging solutions, purchase cost is clearly a major variable, but the true holistic cost has to be considered (CIWM, 2009) so that at the end one can “physically reduce their carbon footprint by investing in recyclable packaging materials, thereby avoiding the cost of sending the waste to landfill – sound economic performance and sound environmental practice” as stated by Chartered Institution of Waste Management, UK.
Below is given a case-study of “Severnside Recycling” in the UK which has made it a huge way by being the largest fibre recycle in Europe for keeping the corrugated loop of packaging.
“Severnside Recycling collects around 1.8m tonnes of fibre each year providing a complete recycling and waste facilities management service to some of the UK’s best known brand names. The company is part of DS Smith, a multinational corrugated packaging and paper group which also owns St Regis Mills, the UK’s leading manufacturer of packaging grade paper. The relationship between these three companies provides a unique closed loop recycling service to customers – Severnside recovering the paper and packaging, providing fibre to feed the producing process at St Regis, which in turn provides the packaging materials for DS Smith.
The UK has taken huge steps forward in recovering and recycling packaging waste over the past 10 years, disposing of around 10.5m tonnes of packaging waste in 2007, of which about 59% was recovered and recycled. Paper and cardboard packaging made up significant levels of most waste streams and , as such, the paper industry is the UK’s largest recycler. But millions of tonnes of waste paper are still sent to landfill each year, causing the industry to import fibre to meet its needs. This simply doesn’t make economic sense.
DS Smith Group’s paper-making operations are the largest users of recovered fibres in the UK and this is sourced predominantly from Severnside’s collection business. Providing the correct sized containers to suit the individual situation enables packaging to be separated at source, often the best way to achieve segregation and avoid contamination, which can lead to recyclable materials ending up in landfill. Severnside provides staff with the training needed to make the maximum use of the waste container storage. This leads to fewer collections, which in turn saves energy and emissions. Once collected, the materials are taken to one of Severnside’s depots for baling.
In next stage of the “loop” the bales are transported to St. Regis Paper Company Mills, where the cardboard is reduced to individual fibres during the pulping process. Chemical, heat and mechanical stages then follow, which improve the quality of the raw material. This is then rolled and layered to make huge paper reels, ready for the production process.
The third part of the journey is the transportation of the paper reels from the mill to one of the DS Smith Packaging production facilities. This is where the paper reels are converted into consumer-ready packaging produts, effectively closing the loop. From collection to production the whole process has been completed in just 14 days."
