Another great tip from Green Correspondent Alice. It looks like the Tetrapak carton makers are pushing for every council to start collecting and recycling this ubiquitous packaging that is used for just about every type of consumable liquid.
+ Tetrapak recycling
It's a very informative site with educational info on what the cartons are made of, how they are recycled, what they can become post-recycling plus maps of where in the UK they can be collected.
I looked up our council (Westminster) in London on the 'where are cartons collected' maps and found that Westminster is one of the only councils registered 'not interested'. Come on, Westminster! It's bad enough our block of building doesn't get kerbside recycling (we still lug it to the local sorting bins) but to not even show any interest in collecting a major product is not good enough. Kudos to Tetrapak for actively pursuing more recycling of its own products and informing the public with a website.
I have made an official request to visit any of London's recycling centres for an in-depth look at how they really work. Questions like a) who sorts out the 'mixed bags' full of various types of recyclables and b) how are they actually recycled? Most people I speak to are cynical that anything happens to the mixed recycling bags and I myself don't understand how our typical mixed recycling bag, which will usually contain up to 6 types of plastic, aluminum, glass and various types of paper (including little bitty pieces) can be efficiently sorted unless there is a huge team rifling through it all on conveyor belts. I want to know - is it all a London borough con? Where is the evidence of how it is all actually recycled? I can never find any reports on it, apart from % of waste that is sent to recycling sites, not how much is actually recycled or how it is recycled. One of our friends accidentally put his recycling bag out a day early on his street in Notting Hill (
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