Brothers Drinks Co. Ltd. wins FINAT end-user Recycling Award

WINNING PROGRAMME ESTABLISHED WITH AVERY DENNISON AND PET UK

Brothers Drinks Co. Ltd. has won the 2016 FINAT End-user Recycling Award for its involvement in a PET liner recycling programme, set up by Avery Dennison and PET UK.

PET is by far the most recycled plastic material in Europe, with the equivalent of more than 66 billion bottles recycled in 2014. However, recycling silicone-coated PET liner is more complex and challenging, and was achieved in Europe for the first time, when Avery Dennison established its programme with PET UK. 

In 2014 Brothers Drinks was one of the first brands to join a recycling programme for self-adhesive labels waste set up by Avery Dennison in partnership with Polymer Extrusion Technologies (UK) Ltd. (www.petuk.com) of Dumfries, Scotland. The programme connects British and Irish brand owners with the release liner recycling facility. 

Xander van der Vlies, sustainability director for Avery Dennison, said the PET UK recycling scheme is one part of a much wider global effort to meet Avery Dennison’s ambitious 2025 Sustainability Goals, which includes a target of eliminating 70% of matrix and liner waste from the industry value chain. 

“We are collaborating with customers across every market,” he said. “We are, for example, a partner of the European paper liner recycling programme with Cycle4green for silicone-coated papers and a waste conversion programme with Tramonto Antonio in Italy. Our work with PET UK makes an important contribution to our ongoing efforts of meeting our 2025 Sustainability Goals and minimizing environmental impacts.” 

Brothers Drinks started shipping PET liner to PET UK on a regular basis in July 2014 and, in the next 12 months, shipped about 50 tonnes of PET liner from its plant in Somerset in southwestern England to the recycler in Scotland. This saved from incineration the waste liner from more than 1.5 million square metres of labels, and yielded enough PET resin to make almost 2 million microwave trays. It is these impressive results that have just earned Brothers the prestigious FINAT End-user Recycling Award. 

In addition to reducing the material going to incineration or landfill, it offers additional benefits. “We estimate we’ve saved between £6,000 and £8,000 by taking part in this programme,” said Peter Faxholm, operations manager at Brothers Drinks.