Separate waste collection of beverage cartons is expensive and provides limited environmental benefits with high societal costs. This is the conclusion of a report compiled by FNLI and CBL, which will be published next week. Wageningen University and Research Centre has evaluated the report.
The packaging industry is taking its product responsibility and the corresponding aims very seriously. The industry is already contributing to the objectives of European and Dutch packaging policy. But it is not easy to change the regulations in the meantime. Therefore the industry conducted its own study into the environmental aspects, costs, market and immediate feasibility of the thermal processing, source separation and post separation of beverage cartons in the Netherlands.
Conclusions of the report
The report of the FNLI and CBL concluded that beverage cartons are essentially a very environmentally benign form of packaging because the CO2 emissions and the quantity of final waste of the cartons are both very low. The current method of processing beverage cartons, i.e. collecting them with the household waste, is absolutely the preferred method. Separate collection is not an option due to the extremely high societal costs, problems with hygiene, the lack of processing capacity and the great uncertainty about the market for the recycled materials. Efficient implementation means that separate collection (separation at the source) is not the most desirable collection method. The high costs are not proportional to the limited environmental benefit. Post separation from household waste is more efficient, but requires the development of the corresponding separation technology. For both separation at the source and post separation, processing is therefore not immediately feasible.
Costs
Every year, 70,000 tonnes of beverage cartons are used to package dairy products, various non-perishable beverages and other products. The report of the FNLI and CBL compares the costs of the current situation, the costs with separate collection (separation at the source) and the costs with separation from household waste (post-separation). According to this comparison, separation at the source is six times more expensive than the current situation. This cost analysis did not take account of the processing costs, such as the costs for preparing the material for reuse. In order to make an unbiased comparison, it was assumed that 100% of the packaging material would follow the same collection and processing route. However, in reality it cannot be expected that a single system will serve the entire market. Every scenario will therefore comprise a mixture of collection and processing methods.
Research of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment
At the request of the Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM), CE Delft is conducting its own study into the possibilities of separate collection and recycling of beverage cartons. This research is based on a policy memorandum approved in April 2009 by the Second Chamber of Parliament. The results of this research will possibly be used to develop new packaging policy. Based on its own integrated research, where both the environmental effects and the societal costs were calculated, the packaging industry has concluded that separate collection of beverage cartons would be an unwise policy choice.