Nestle Collaborated with Yes Recycling to Boost Flexible Plastic Recycling

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Food and beverage giant Nestle announced its decision to partner with UK-based Yes Recycling to boost recycling of flexible packaging. The proposed plastic recycling plant in Fife, Scotland, expected to commence full operations by end-2021, targets to recycle around 15,000 tonnes of flexible plastics used in food packaging to produce an alternative to plywood.

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Nestle has provided a pre-investment of £1.65million towards the processing plant, through the forward sale of Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs). The recycling plant will process packaging such as KitKat wrappers, Purina pet food pouches, Rowntree confectionery sharing bags and Nestlé Cereal bags collected from kerbside. The collected materials will be washed, sorted, broken down and turned into pellets. These pellets will be compressed to form a new plastic sheet, called Ecosheet, which could be recycled for use.

This is the first time in the UK that the category of flexible plastics is recycled. Earlier, such local recycling facilities were not available in the country.

Alison Bramfitt, Group Packaging Manager at Nestlé UK and Ireland noted that the company is committed to have all of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. Also, it aims to reduce use of virgin plastics by one-third over the next four years.