The UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has provided funding for a consortium to improve recycling and the remanufacture of aluminum.
LRS Consultancy will lead the recycling project in collaboration with Enval, SITA UK, Nestlé UK & Ireland, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Tesco UK.
As part of the project, the consortium will scope out possible approaches to collect flexible packaging materials containing aluminum such as toothpaste tubes as well as sachets of pet food.
According to LRS, flexible laminate packaging includes valuable aluminum and various recyclable plastics and cannot be collected and separated easily.
In view of this, the consortium will initiate a research to recover and treating flexible plastic and aluminum laminate packaging by developing and trialing new methods.
The study will initially include exploring ways in order to increase the flexible laminate packaging volume collected and recycled in England.
In addition to this, a range of collection and communication approaches will also be evaluated for households and commercial premises within various regions of the country.
Following this, the consortium will implement trials to test collection solutions for flexible packaging depending on the results of the scoping study.
To ascertain the effective solution for different demographics and locations, various collection methods would be assessed, noted LRS.
The results of the research will allow the companies to evaluate the potential to include flexible packaging in mainstream recycling collections, while assessing the cost benefit of various approaches trialled.
LRS Consultancy managing director Dee Moloney said, "Brands are increasingly using flexible laminate packaging to help preserve their products for longer, reduce the amount of material used in the manufacturing process and 'lightweight' their packaging. "
