ACE, The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, and its members SIG Combibloc, BillerudKorsnäs, Elopak, Stora Enso and Tetra Pak, have set the industry’s vision for the future. They claim to deliver the most sustainable packaging for resilient food supply systems which is renewable, climate positive and circular.

Through its robust and ambitious Roadmap, the industry commits to take action on all parts of the industry value chain, from sustainable sourcing to climate impact and recycling. Increasing the collection and recycling of beverage cartons to reach a 90% collection rate and at least a 70% recycling rate by 2030, and the decarbonisation of the industry’s value chain in line with the 1.5o C aligned science-based targets are included in the ten commitments.

In line with the vision of ACE members, beverage cartons will be:

• made only from renewable and /or recycled material
• fully recyclable and recycled
• made entirely from sustainably sourced raw materials
• the packaging solution with the lowest carbon footprint

Beverage cartons are a recyclable low carbon packaging solution that protects food and beverages, allowing their safe use and transport while also preventing food waste. With the commitments and targets set in the 2030 Roadmap, the industry will strive for its packaging to continue to actively contribute towards the ambitions of the EU Green Deal, specifically climate neutrality, circularity, biodiversity and resilient food systems, while never compromising the health and safety of consumers.

Municipal material cycles of used beverage cartons and hygiene paper

In Slovenia, we recycle app 5,5% of used beverage carton in a single circular economy project, named Municipal material cycle. These are closed material loops of used beverage cartons, collected by households and institutions in certain municipalities and hygiene paper products that are made of them for the same local community from collected UBCs.

The project is active in 15 municipalities in Slovenia, where waste management is handled by Voka Snaga Ljubljana, Komunala Novo mesto, Komunala Brežice and Komunala Kranj.

Important facts about beverage cartons

The material

Beverage cartons are made of (on average, by weight):

• 75% paperboard, a renewable material when the forests are managed responsibly
• 20% polymers, mostly polyethylene, to prevent leakage
• 5% aluminium, to protect drinks from light and oxygen

Beverage cartons recycling

Paper fibres from beverage cartons are highly desirable as a source of recovered fibre. After collection and sorting, the material is sent to paper recycling mills with dedicated equipment, where the beverage cartons are recycled in a process where water and agitation separate the paper fibres from the plastic and aluminium. The process of cleaning the materials is chemical-free; cellulose fibres are being sterilized by steam on 120 ^oC.

UBC can be recycled into new, high quality hygiene paper products, such as tissues, handkerchiefs and toilet paper. This way we protect wood and forests, valuable natural source.

Polymers and aluminium (PolyAl) are handled as a separate material stream, used within the construction and other industries.

We researched the impact of municipal material cycles in MMC Novo mesto municipalities. The results show a very high level of environmental awareness, with over 70% agreement on importance of environment preservation activities. People are concerned about their local waste management activities and practices.

The research also shows that almost everyone in MMC Novo mesto (99%) supports the use of recycled hygiene paper from local material cycle to be used in public institutions and companies.

The research was conducted by Mediana research agency, took place in 8 municipalities that forms MMC Novo mesto (Novo mesto, Dolenjske Toplica, Mirna Peč, Straža, Šentjernej, Škocjan, Šmarješke Toplice and Žužemberk). 404 respondents were interviewed, half of them thru web panel and the other half over the phone. There were 100 public institution employees included in the research - they are actual users of recycled hygiene paper products. We asked them for more detailed quality assessment of our products – multipurpose towels, handkerchiefs, and toilet paper.

We were testing the colour, absorbance, touch and feel and general quality compared to regular (not recycled) products. On the scale from 1 to 5, all our products were given high likeability scores on all tested characteristics – the highest ranked was the absorbance (4.0), followed by the colour (3.9), touch & feel and general quality (3.8).

Respondents of the research expressed very high (over 90%) awareness and concern for natural environment. The results show that over 80% of population in these municipalities highly appreciate individuals and organizations that are active in saving the environment. Over 80% of population already separate waste packaging, but they claim to put even more attention to beverage carton waste separation in the future, because of the MMC project. 90% of the population believe that such projects as municipal material cycle of waste beverage carton and recycled hygiene paper are important for environmental protection and they support the idea that local public institutions prefer purchase of those materials.

Under the name "Common Green", Public Holding Ljubljana applied to the IPOP Institute's tender with their municipal material cycle of used beverage cartons and hygiene paper which currently includes 39 public companies and institutions in Ljubljana. This is a circular economy project where recycled used beverage cartons from the existing municipal waste management system are used instead of primary raw materials in the production process of hygienic paper.

In its selection among the 15 best, the evaluation committee justified it as follows: »the common and green public procurement system represents great potential for all municipalities, which have the power to invest in local and green development through smart public procurement«.

The IPOP institute published tender »Cities to cities« and invited Slovenian municipalities to submit their good practices for sustainable urban development. 29 projects from 13 municipalities entered the competition. Members of evaluation board were Tomaž Miklavčič from the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, Mojca Švajger from the Municipality of Tržič and Nina Plevnik and Petra Očkerl from IPoP.

The project is part of the URBACT program, whose mission is to promote and support sustainable urban development. Selected municipalities with good practices will receive City to city award, which includes publication in the City to city catalogue #3, websites and social networks promotion and presentation at the event.

Additional information and the list of all 15 awarded projects is available HERE.

The project of creating municipal material cycles (MMC) has been very active and fruitful even during the epidemic lockdown. We are intensively preparing ourselves for the activation of new members and have onboarded a new member of the project team. In the following year, we will strive hard for the additional expansion of the project in several regions throughout Slovenia and elsewhere.

Špela Gutnik has been chosen to take over the position of National Coordinator of the project in Slovenia to ensure additional progress of this important circular economy project.  For the last ten years, she’s been managing sales and marketing in one of the biggest Slovenian media companies. As a project manager she’s been actively involved in business development, implementing communication strategies and digitalization of the company. Her wide range of knowledge and experience in business management, sales and marketing will be a great asset in developing the MMC projects in Slovenia. As National coordinator, she is going to be in charge of creating new MMCs and reviving and attracting new members in municipalities, where MMC is already active.

The first and most important role of creating new MMCs is to increase awareness of the municipal corporations and members of the local public that they can encourage more sustainable development of their community. In other words – if they change the way of waste placement from their community, they are going to impact positively on the long-term development of community, business and environment in that community.

The municipal material cycle can be set up in any municipality or city in the EU that has has a municipal waste separation system in place.

Since waste separation is being efficiently set in majority of municipalities in Slovenia, the process of establishing new MMC’s should not be complicated. And cases that we have set up to this point show that establishing MMC is very important for the local communities also in terms of ecology.

As illustration, we are listing the following figures:

• the MMC has been successfully established in 10 municipalities in Slovenia; thus, the project covers 18,5 % of the total population;
• by now 17 million pcs (600 tonnes) of used beverage cartons have been collected;
• by now the project in total contributed to the 7.789 trees from being cut and reduced the CO2 emissions for 486.000 kg.

As MMC pioneers, Ljubljana, Novo mesto area and Brežice represent a valuable source of information and benchmarks, on the basis of which we can plan further development of the project.

We will strive to deliver the best possible results: we would like to double the number of residents in active MMC’s by the end of 2021.

Our mission is and remains the “Circular Culture”

On a global level, renewable resources are limited, and we are facing intensive population growth. To enable long-term sustainability, we need to start managing those resources much more economically – by extending their life-cycle and finding ways to reuse them.

This is exactly what we are doing with activating MMCs – in cooperation with municipalities, municipal corporations and residents, we are changing the purpose of existing waste management system. We are helping to transform it into a circular model. Beverage cartons, collected with a purpose in local communities are being submitted for regeneration process, to become a source of raw materials for new paper hygiene products. Those products are returned to the same local communities where the beverage cartons were collected as a source of raw material. That's how the material cycle is closed.

Slovenia is using 3 planets worth of renewable resources

In 2020 Earth Overshoot Day landed on August 22^nd , while according to EOD statistics, Slovenia has used all their renewable resources already by April 26^th .

By establishing MMCs, where we enable and promote reuse of beverage cartons, we directly influence on the improvement of ecological statistics of Slovenia. We sincerely hope to be able to significantly stimulate the Circular Economy and promote sustainable development.