you can recycle tetra pak!

Submitted by sproutingforth on Tue, 2009-04-21 11:00

I have to confess to sending various irate messages to Tetra Pak over the last year about their apparent lack of recycling facilities in Cape Town, or the country for that matter.

The perception out there, despite their very obvious drive to recycle overseas, is that one can't recycle tetra pak, and there are a fair amount of them if you consider things like fruit juice, some olive oil, long-life milk and custard all come in these containers – they heap up over time!

Despite receiving absolutely no reply to any of my emails, it seems Tetra Pak have been recycling, and some time ago we heard that there were a couple of drop-off sites in Cape Town.

The good news is that there are 18 different drop-offs around Cape Town, 22 points in Johannesburg and 1 in Durban (1288 Old North Coast Road is where the actual recycling takes place). Provided you're prepared to collect the Tetra Paks, wash and take them to various collection points around the city yourself – it shouldn't be too difficult as there are enough to have one relatively close to you.

If you're like us, then the drop-off closest to you also takes other recycling and you can offload all your overflowing boxes at once.

The more that are collected the more likely that further collection points result – hopefully in time there will even be rural collections made. So spread the word and let others know about them.

Drop-off points in Cape Town include: Kuils River, Bellville, Table View, Green Point, Constantia, the City Bowl, Hout Bay and Salt River. For the full list of collection points. Click here for the detailed list of drop-offs in Cape Town.

Drop-off points in Jo'burg include: Bedfordview, Greenside, Marlboro, Midrand, Norwood, Olifantsfontein and Kyalami. Click here for the detailed list of drop-offs in Johannesburg.

Happy recycling!

pic: blog.inertiabev.com

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Tetra Pac Recycling

Submitted by Tracy at Kisma Kreative (not verified) on Tue, 2009-04-21 12:26.

A while ago I was on a simular mission - to find tetra pac recyclers! I started with Clover though as they say on thier boxes that they are recycleable but don't have any information on how or were. They were very quick to get back to me and the answere was that there are no tetra pac recycling plants in the Eastern Cape as yet. Armed with this knowledge we can at least make an educated choice when shopping. For the products we can't avoid we at Kisma collect tetra pacs here in Grahamstown and make coin purses and gift boxes at the moment, we hope to come up with new products soon - there are alot of tetra pacs out there! Thanks for a great article! www.kisma.co.za

Re: tetrapak recycling

Submitted by Carey (not verified) on Tue, 2009-04-21 13:00.

This is great to know. We've been recycling ours at the municipal dump on Rosmead Ave ... a while back we contacted Tetrapak and offered to start a recycling plant in CT ... they were all to keen, if we would just pay the costs - a cool R2 million! :O

Tetrapak in Helderberg

Submitted by Sally D (not verified) on Tue, 2009-04-21 23:50.

We're recycling from our local primary school and could probably get quite a lot of Tetrapak if we tried. Our nearest depot looks like Zevenwacht but that's quite far away.

How does one get them to establish a collection point in your area?

I'm frustrated that we save all the plastic 2l milk bottles but the Tetrapak cartons still end up in the landfill.

BTW our school is making quite a lot of money from this recycling project, which is also fun and educational for the kids!

collection in your area

Submitted by sproutingforth on Thu, 2009-04-23 12:54.

Hi Sally

Great that your recycling project is doing so well! I don't know how you would go about establishing a collection point closer to you. contacing them directly hasn't paid off for me, but you could try? We gave Tetra Pak a call last week to speak to them about something else, and got through to the factory. There does't seem to be a call-centre or office where one can speak to anyone. And emailing them has proved futile.

I know for a fact that Tetra

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2010-01-20 19:43.

I know for a fact that Tetra Pac have no working recycle depot. Just ask the correct questions to the correct poeple and see for yourself. How does shipping the waste to other countrys sound to you ??????

Tetra Pak

Submitted by Dave Duke (not verified) on Tue, 2009-05-05 17:28.

The drop off sites for Tetra Pak is great, but being a composite material of PET, Paper and Foil my understanding was that you can only Hydro Pulp the material for re-use as some kind of 2nd grade cardboard. Also is the Hydro Pulping unit not located in Germiston, which then requires transport from all the drop off sites to take it to Germiston. If so, surely the Carbon emmissions associated with the Transport would outweigh the benefit of using less resources by recycling.

I am not convinced the picture on the packs giving tou the warm and fuzzy feeling "this product can be recycled" has hit the mark yet.

Dave Duke - Durban

Tetra Pak is not recyclable in South Africa!

Submitted by Earth Green Recycling (not verified) on Fri, 2009-05-15 20:08.

I would like to try and set straight some of the confusion and lies about recycling Tetra Pak in South Africa. It is one of my BIG frustrations!

Firstly, my home town, Durban. The North Coast Road is not a drop off for Tetra Pak!!! Nor do they recycle there!!! Although Raj does take Tetra Pak which he is busy storing up, he currently has no place where he can send it. He used to send it to East London where there was a trial project, but this is no longer happening. The gentleman running the trial project is/has moved to Cape Town. Not sure if he's going to restart anything in CT? So there is nowhere for any of the Tetra Paks in Durban to go at the moment. The same applies to the rest of the country. I would love to know what is happening with all the Tetra Pak being collected in Cape Town?! It definately isn't being sent up to Joburg. There is only one small Tetra Pak recycling plant in Germiston. This is privately owned (as the gentleman in Cape Town mentioned at 2 million rand cost). I'd be surprised if they could even handle the whole of Joburg waste, and we were told that they certainly don't take from anywhere else in the country. They are just too small.

Another gripe - the fact that Clover mentions on their 1 litre Tetra Pak milk cartons "this product is fully recyclable" is a pure lie! The fact that Tetra Pak is being collected certainly doesn't mean that it's being recycled! I phoned Clover and they gave me a list of schools in Durban to drop off. These are all going to North Coast Road and are NOT recycled! Tetra Pak doesn't like to disclose what is actually going on. We have managed to set up a connection between Tetra Pak and re- ethical and they are discussing various options in Durban at the moment. As usual, it's like a hot potato, nobody wants to put money into it and it gets passed around. The buck really stops with Tetra Pak who should become more environmentally responsible, but they show NO interest.

If we ever hear anything more on this, we will let you know.

Be consumer wise, buy an alternative!!

Robyn Walne
Earth Green

Is this true?

Submitted by sproutingforth on Mon, 2009-05-18 10:30.

Hi Robyn

I have emailed the tetra pak environmental manager and hope that she will take the time to give us Tetra Pak's version of the story. I would be horrified to find that our efforts to recycle are in fact a waste of time, and that Tetra Pak recycling collections are no more than 'window dressing'?

The Environmental Manager's reply

Submitted by sproutingforth on Wed, 2009-05-20 08:52.

Thank you for your e-mail.

At this stage there is only one recycling plant that recycles Tetra Pak material which is based in Johannesburg, plans are underway to expand the plant and to set up another plant in Cape Town later this year.

With regards to the drop-off point in Durban, I've been dealing with a lady called Rondi Dinkele who runs a schools programme in Durban North and she takes all her material to this drop off point, I met with a gentleman called Vusi in the past who agreed to bale the material and store it until there was enough material to transport it, as we did when we sent the material to East London to run a trial. This is also the case in Cape Town, there are various drop-off points set up around Cape Town and I can assure you that it is being sent up to Johannesburg. I would be happy to get in touch with this person to discuss this further.

At the moment the recycling plant in Johannesburg is running at full capacity, as soon as we have expanded the capacity in Johannesburg and set up a new plant in Cape Town, I will then be able to increase my drop-off points.

I haven't met with Raj yet but I'll be sure to get in touch with him to arrange for the material to be transported to Johannesburg.

Kindest regards
The Environmental Manager

A further email from The environmental manager:

I just got off the phone with Vusi, he has been collecting and baling Tetra Pak material. I believe Raj is a new partner and perhaps wasn't aware of the arrangement we had with Vusi. I am sending a truck to collect the material to have it recycled in Johannesburg.

Thank you for the story you did on Tetra Pak recycling. I also read the other comments and was a little disturbed that some people are finding it difficult to get a response from Tetra Pak for their queries, I make a point of replying to all queries that come to me and I appreciate that some consumers may be experiencing problems.

Recycling is one of Tetra Pak's global strategic objectives. We recognise that our activities, like all other activities on our planet, have an impact on the environment. We are constantly looking for new ways to recycle Tetra Pak cartons to ensure that they don't end up in landfills.

We have various projects that are still in trial phase, unfortunatley with projects like this they are long-term and don't always go as quickly as we would like it to. As I mentioned before we have one recycling plant that is already running at full capacity and plans are underway to expand the Johannesburg plant and to set one up in Cape Town. Once this is in place we will then look at also increasing our drop-off points, we cannot do this until we have increased the capacity of the recycling plant.

The plan is to have a recycling facility in all major metropolitan areas to avoid having to transport the waste. Once again I assure you that the material that is collected in Cape Town is in fact being sent up to Johannesburg for recycling. We understand that it is not an ideal situation but it is a solution until we have a recycling plant set up in Cape Town.

tertra pack recycling

Submitted by juta (not verified) on Thu, 2009-06-04 21:21.

Pretoria has at lease one drop-off station for almos everything too! Including Tetra Pak!
Menlopark Primary - a school initiative! Unfortunately only open on Wednesdays 7 to 8. As demand increases we will extend open times!