Pet food pouch recycling trial
Reducing the impact of well-fed pooches and moggies
- Bristol Refill Cup Scheme
- The Flexible Plastic Fund
- The Fixy project
- Podback
- Cancer Research UK battery collections
- Pet food pouch recycling trial
- Maximising recycling in purpose built flats
- Indigo Environmental
Reducing plastic pawprints
Pets at Home are a valued member of Ecosurety and we jumped at the chance to help them improve the collection and recycling of a notoriously difficult type of packaging to recycle - the humble pet food pouch.
Traditionally, the collection and recycling of used pouches has not been widely available to consumers. It became our pet project to collaborate and make sure it is.
A mounting problem
Laminated flexible packaging, including pet food pouches, accounts for nearly 140,000 tonnes of packaging waste per year in the UK, increasing 10% annually. Whilst they are extremely efficient forms of packaging, used pouches are difficult to recycle and their collection is not widely available.
That is starting to change however, with the UK Plastics Pact Flexible Plastic Packaging Roadmap aiming for all households to ultimately have access to flexible plastic recycling facilities in the coming years.
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Trialling new in-store pouch collections
We collaborated with Pets at Home to launch a used pouch collection trial in November 2020, with 20 stores initially participating across the UK, from Aberdeen to Bristol.
Dedicated bins were created by Pets at Home whilst Ecosurety sourced a recycler who could reprocess the collected pouches into two primary raw materials, aluminium and oil.
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Off to a flying start
Three months after the trial launched over 200kg of pouches had been collected, despite deliberately low levels of communication due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Levels of contamination were also very low thanks to clear messaging and dedicated collection bins.
Collection points were increased to over 40 stores by summer 2021 and will eventually be available to more than 450 across the whole UK.
Can we help you tackle a problem material?
We are uniquely placed to forge collaborations that can tackle problem materials, just like flexible plastics and pouches.
Talk to our team to get the conversation started.
Contact us now