Carton recycling: it’s complicated
Meghan Kincheloe, Director of Community Development
Sedona Recycles
Those of you who are avid recyclers may lament that there is one type of container that remains in your trash can time after time: the milk, soy milk, and ice cream cartons. Cartons are not recycled locally at the curb or at Sedona Recycles, so they keep heading to the landfill. Why can’t they be recycled? Are they really that complicated?
Cartons come in several forms. The most common type is the gable top carton, most notably used for milk and cream. Similar in material composition to the gable top is the ice cream carton. And increasingly, consumers are seeing aseptic cartons, commonly referred to by the brand name Tetra Pak. These containers are usually rectangular and hold items such as broth, soy milk, and coconut water.
Gable top and ice cream cartons are made of 80% paper, sandwiched between two layers of plastic that make up the remaining 20%. Tetra Pak containers are far more complicated. These cartons are comprised of 74% paper, 22% plastic, and 4% aluminum configured in six alternating layers, plus additional layers of adherent resin and ink.
As you may be realizing, the combinations of these raw materials makes recycling more difficult than the process for single materials such as cardboard or glass. Before any recyclable materials can actually be recycled, they have to be separated from contaminants. In the case of cartons, each different part of the packaging is a contaminant to the others.
Despite the difficulty of the process, cartons are recycled, mostly in Europe and Canada. Processing facilities are beginning to open in the US in the hopes of recovering some of the 460,000 tons of cartons we landfill each year (as of 2009). In 2008, a meager .05% of cartons were recycled in the US, so we’ve got a long way to go.
Unfortunately, the process of recycling cartons is not ideal. Cartons are pulped, during which aluminum and plastic particles are separated from the paper. The remaining slurry of paper fiber is recycled into products such as toilet paper. Aluminum and plastic are impossible to separate using this process, so they are combined into pellets that can be used in the production of “plastic wood” products such as benches and decking.
Despite the difficulty of the recycling process, the end result for these raw materials is not uncommon, even for relatively pristine recyclable materials. Paper is frequently recycled into toilet paper and many types of plastic are commonly recycled into combination plastic products like “plastic wood.” The waste of aluminum is most unfortunate, particularly given the immense energy savings of recycling aluminum, but because aluminum comprises only 4% of aseptic cartons, you may be able to forgive the waste.
In fact, many hail cartons as an environmental triumph, despite the difficulty of recycling. A typical aseptic carton has a product-to-packaging ration of 94% beverage to 6% packaging, by weight. By comparison, PET plastic bottles are 95% product to 5% packaging, steel cans are 89% product to 13% packaging, and glass bottles are 71% product to 29% packaging. So what does that mean? An efficient product-to-packaging ratio means that cartons require less fuel to ship, so greenhouse gas emissions are fewer than for those produced by shipping the same products in glass or steel.
If cartons are, in fact, recyclable, and are efficient to ship, why aren’t they recyclable locally? We can’t speak on behalf of other recycling centers that serve the Sedona area, but Sedona Recycles has decided that carton recycling does not meet our high standards. Although we have buyers that would purchase cartons for recycling, the cartons would be exported to countries where we cannot be sure that they would actually be recycled.
Sedona Recycles strives to keep our materials recycled in the US, and we just do not feel comfortable telling the public that their cartons are being recycled when we cannot be sure of exactly where and how that is happening and what they are becoming. Until that day comes, we will choose not to recycle cartons.
So what is the alternative to cartons? We encourage consumers to buy products in other types of easily recyclable packaging and avoid cartons whenever possible. If you must buy cartons, you can feel a little bit better knowing that a low product-to-packaging ratio means that you are landfilling the smallest amount of packaging you have to.
For more information about cartons and carton recycling, contact Sedona Recycles at (928) 204-1185 or visit www.sedonarecycles.org.