The vanishing aluminium: Defra seeks recycling rule change to meet targets

Rather than recycling more, Defra is proposing to change the rules covering the recycling of aluminium so that it looks as if it is achieving better performance targets.

It is also proposing very modest or no increases in recycling rates on some materials, and floats, then appears to dismiss, the return of a deposit system for bottles.

The proposals come in a new consultation on recovery and recycling targets for packaging waste for 2013-2017.

Tetrapak and the vanishing aluminium

Currently, between 16 and 20,000 tonnes of aluminium are lost each year because the material is found in composite packaging such as drinks cartons, which can't be recycled.

Rather than attempt to recover this waste, Defra is seeking to revise the reporting rules and pretend that it doesn't exist.

60,304 tonnes of packaging aluminium, or 40.9%, out of a total of 147,500 tonnes, were recycled in 2010.

If the 20,000 tonnes found in cartons were removed from this total, then the amount recycled would then appear to be 47% of the total.

Not only would it mean that there was less awareness of this valuable resource and so no incentive reclaim it, but it would mean that waste producers would classify the composite material as paper, since this forms the majority of its constituent (which is 75% paper, 19% plastic and 6% aluminium).

Recycling it would therefore obtain a lower than expected obligation.

88% of councils in the country currently collect these drink cartons, the most well-known type of which is Tetra Pak.

There is no facility for recycling them in UK; the last one, in Scotland, closed in 2006. They are shipped abroad at an unknown environmental cost to an unknown fate.

The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE UK) tries to make out that this is environmentally beneficial.

But Tetra Pak has long been the subject of criticism from environmental groups because the growing use of these cartons for milk, juice, soup and more has progressively replaced milk bottles, deposit-bottles and cans, which can either be reused or recycled with a much lighter environmental footprint.

Tetra Pak's Swedish owner, Hans Rausing, has often been named as one of the richest men in the country.

It is technically possible to recover the aluminium from drinks cartons, but it has not yet been demonstrated on a commercial scale.

Wales and Scotland both have zero waste policies with ambitious recycling targets under their interpretation of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive.

However, the Waste Review for England lacks such a vision.