Beverage cartons – a highly recyclable packaging
Beverage cartons are highly recyclable. Palurec, a recycling plant for plastic and aluminium components from beverage cartons, has been ensuring this since 2021.
Palurec thus complements the successful paper fibre recycling that has existed since the 1990s and processes polyethylene and aluminium into marketable secondary raw materials. In addition, Saperatec, another recycling plant, which also processes plastics and aluminium from beverage cartons, will go into operation in 2023/2024.
Study by the German Federal Environment Agency on recyclability
What effects the operation of the so-called PE-Alu- recycling has on the recyclability of beverage cartons was investigated by the Federal Environment Agency through the Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung mbH (GVM). The study called „Ermittlung des Anteils hochgradig recyclingfähiger systembeteiligungspflichtiger Verpackungen auf dem deutschen Markt“ („Determining the share of highly recyclable packaging subject to system participation on the German market“) was published in February 2023.
The result: according to the scenario, from 2025 onwards, all beverage cartons on the German market can be 90% or more recyclable, if only due to Palurec and its recycling of polyethylene and aluminium from beverage cartons. Specifically, the above-mentioned study calculates that 71.8% of beverage cartons could be recycled at between 90 and 95%. 28.2% could even achieve recyclability beyond the 95% mark.
But how does the recycling of beverage cartons work in practice? Watch our video to find out: