Carton packages are already recyclable – indeed, 51bn Tetra Pak cartons were recycled in 2019. But achieving a truly circular economy where waste is designed out and materials stay in use requires that all packages can get new life. And that requires collaborative innovation of the kind in which Tetra Pak and Stora Enso are involved.
Used carton packages placed into a recycling bin in many parts of the world enter a process that ends with their component parts – paperboard, plastic and aluminium – getting a new life as new products. But this is not the case everywhere, as infrastructure is lacking and many waste management systems are far from optimal in many markets. As a result, globally only 13.5% of total waste is recycled, while 37% ends in landfills and 33% is burned or openly dumped as litter.
As part of its new innovation and partnership ecosystem to address the climate impact of the food industry, Tetra Pak is working alongside longtime partner Stora Enso to reduce or eliminate the amount of plastic where possible, without sacrificing food safety.
Hannu Kasurinen, Executive Vice President Packaging Materials at Stora Enso, says: “The most important strategic objective for our innovation is to make packages recyclable. And the way we do it is by either reducing or fully replacing the fossil components with renewable fibre-based or other non-fossil materials. The idea is that we can offer a more sustainable packaging solutions without sacrificing food safety, and while making sure that food waste does not increase.”
Anke Hampel, Procurement Director for Innovation Sustainability at Tetra Pak, points out that this work has a very strong starting point, as more than 70% of materials in carton packages are already renewable. “And we have already done a large transformation towards using renewable polymers. But what we're really trying to drive together with partners like Stora Enso is to arrive at the fully cellulose-based packaging, which then will help us to achieve a low-carbon circular economy.”
Stora Enso and Tetra Pak recently announced they are joining forces to explore the possibility of building a new recycling line to significantly increase the recycling of used beverage cartons in Central and Eastern Europe. A feasibility study will assess the viability of building a large-scale recycling line for used beverage cartons at Stora Enso’s Ostrołęka Mill in Poland.
In the model, Stora Enso would pulp and separate the fibers from used beverage cartons and use the recycled fibres as a raw material, while Tetra Pak would secure the recycling and reuse of polymers and aluminium.
For the innovation to have a positive environmental impact, it needs to be scalable and to be shared with the rest of the value chain and the packaging industry more broadly. So in a major shift from previous research and development work, much of the fruits of the collaboration are to be shared openly.
“We hope that people are able to bring all their crazy ideas to the table,” says Hampel. “If you do this on your own, you might miss out on the diversity of ideas that could help us with speed to market we need, given the environmental situation we are in.”
She is confident that all fossil-based components of today’s packaging can be replaced with renewable materials. “It's a question of making it happen, bringing the right players in the value chain together. I think the packaging industry has received a wake-up call – a very strong one – and is taking the challenge very seriously.”
Kasurinen says the packaging industry is still at the beginning of its collaboration journey. “The more we allocate resources, the more we open up the innovation, the more we find opportunities. And when we do it in partnership, we can achieve our goals and then set new ones along the way.”