KP Snacks is a company mainly known for popcorn, crisps, pretzels or packaged nuts. Now, they may also become well known for their recycling plan too!
Following the example of some other companies, including Walkers or Hovis, they have formed an alliance with the recycling company Terracycle in order to bring into place a national scheme of allowing people to set up collection points for the packaging of their products in publicly accessible areas.
On top of that, the introduction of collection points are completely free, an alluring advantage for anyone wishing to help out without losing anything.
This should work as a way to counter many waste collectors not accepting some of the company’s packaging being mixed with regular recyclables.
Terracycle’s Recycling Plan
The first step of the plan proposed by Terracycle is to have a series of local collection points displayed on Terracycle’s website. KP Snacks will then send a bin exclusively for their product to that location, making sure that the area is accessible to all members of the public- locations will include local shops or schools.
After this is set up, the point administrator can send the waste away for recycling. The KP Snacks’ waste that can be placed in these bins include all their products, giving a solution to those who had trouble knowing when to bin or recycle packaging for popcorn, crisps, nuts and pretzels. The administrator will then download a free shipping label from Terracycle, who takes control of the waste by cleaning and shredding the waste into small pellets of plastic to aid in the construction of outdoor furniture, waste bins, storage boxes or plastic lumber.
Terracycle has, and has for a long time, encouraged collectors to send them as many packages they can to reuse for other purposes. In order to make these bulk contributions far more alluring, there is a weight-based system of offering “charity points” for those who provide over 2kg worth of packets, or roughly 600 packets, in one go.
Mark Thorpe, the chief executive of KP Snacks, has declared this is part of a new, three-stage plan of reducing the impact of packaging that they title their “pacKPromise.” This plan aims to make all the company’s packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable no later than 2025.
Thorpe stated: “Phase One of KP’s pacKPromise is to use less packaging. We have invested significantly in our Hula Hoops factory and are now using 23% less packaging in our Hula Hoops multipacks. Phase Two is to provide a short-term recycling solution, which we are doing with the launch of this new programme with TerraCycle. Phase Three is for our plastic packaging to be fully recyclable by 2025 as part of our membership of the UK Plastics Pact.”
Terracycle’s other recycling plan partnerships
This deal with KP is far from Terracycle’s first partnership. The recycling organisation has formed partnerships with multiple notable British companies, including the ones mentioned at the beginning, and several international brands.
Hovis implemented a similar approach to this business recycling plan. Collection points included the standard public collection points such as schools or charities.
There was also the partnership with Walkers, in which Terracycle aided in the recycling of the crisp company’s packets to be used in different ways.
Some of Terracycle’s most recent partnerships include the pet company Mars Petcare, toothpaste giant Colgate Palmolive and manufacturing firm Kellogg. These deals have led to similar recycling schemes when it comes to the recycling of food packaging, oral healthcare products and Pringles cans respectively.
The government’s new consultations
Many companies are following the trend of Terracycle’s system when it comes to staying in line with the newest UK government consultation, which will set out to raise household recycling rates.
This is due to the stagnation of recycling progress in the last few years. Whilst there was a large growth in recycling from 11% in 2011 to 45% in 2013. Almost 6 years on, however, there has been no real boost in recycling rates, which calls for new, creative approaches to be made.
This consultation will last 12 weeks and will focus on an insight on several aspects within the recommendations of the government’s upcoming environmental bill.
An example of such is a national deposit return system. What this entails is a consumer paying an upfront fee ranging from around 8-22p on top of the price of their can or bottle, with the additional price being redeemed when returning the empty container. Obviously, nobody wants to pay extra for a drink, so implementing such a system would see to a greater incentive in customers to recycling their can or bottle.
Those bringing the system forward hope that the recycling of drink containers will rise from 57% up to 95% in the UK. This will mirror the systems currently in place in both Germany and the Netherlands, and this progression will surely continue the domino effect of countries taking notice and acting themselves.
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