The Beverage Carton Industry launches a platform to increase recycling across Europe

The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, welcomes yesterday’s final adoption of the revised legislative package on waste by the Council of the EU. ACE members believe that the provisions included in the new legislation – in particular mandatory separate collection of all packaging which is a precondition to recycling – provide a strong foundation on which Member States can build to move towards a more circular economy.

Kristian Hall, ACE President, said: “Our industry is committed to supporting increased recycling of its packages and securing long-term sustainable recycling solutions. Hence, the members of ACE, BillerudKorsnäs, Elopak, SIG Combibloc, Stora Enso and Tetra Pak, have decided to launch a dedicated platform to drive and coordinate the industry’s engagement in beverage carton recycling, including the non-paper components of our packages across Europe.” The new platform will be based in Frankfurt and complement ACE, the industry’s voice towards EU policy stakeholders. It will also closely collaborate with national carton industry associations, member company initiatives and other stakeholders.

Hall continues: “Recognising that sustainable recycling programs require collaboration within and beyond our own industry, the new platform will actively seek alliances and partnerships with industry actors sharing similar needs to optimise recycling solutions.”

“We have come a long way to reach our current recycling rate of 47 % in Europe, despite the absence of a specific recycling target for beverage cartons in the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. With this additional initiative and partnerships, we are confident we will be able to achieve the Directive’s overall recycling rate objective of 55 % by 2025 and 65 % by 2035.”

About ACE
ACE provides a European platform for beverage carton manufacturers and their paperboard suppliers to benchmark and profile cartons as renewable, recyclable and low carbon packaging solutions. Engaging with stakeholders and partners seeking high environmental stewardship, it contributes expertise to EU policy, legislation and standard‐setting.ACE members include beverage carton producers Tetra Pak, SIG Combibloc and Elopak; they develop, manufacture and market systems for the packaging and distribution of food, and produce packaging material at 20 plants in Europe. A great majority of the paperboard used by ACE members in beverage cartons in Europe is produced by Stora Enso in Skoghall (Sweden) and Imatra (Finland), and BillerudKorsnäs in Gävle and Frövi (Sweden), who are also members of ACE.