Triggering a ‘fresh’ packaging
recycling trial
Summary
Plastic packaging used in air and home care product categories, like
‘trigger tops’ and ‘flip caps’, are not separately collected or commonly
recycled in the UK. When these are left attached to their plastic
bottle, they generally do not get recycled because of their different
plastic polymers and the metal springs.
Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) Febreze brand worked with Somerset Waste
Partnership, Gloucestershire Joint Waste Team, TerraCycle and Tesco
in a project managed and coordinated by LRS Consultancy, to evaluate
the barriers to recycling and the effectiveness of non-kerbside options
for collecting this type of infrequently arising waste plastic packaging.
P&G wants its products and packaging to have a closed loop life cycle
wherever possible and was keen to investigate ways to encourage and
enable recycling of its packaging. The cross-sector consortium worked
together in partnership with the aim of ascertaining whether the items
could be successfully identified by consumers, captured and
subsequently recycled.
The project provided a good opportunity for a range of organisations
involved in the manufacture and recycling of packaging to see how
more packaging materials could be retained within the supply chain
and recycled. The short trial was jointly funded by WRAP and P&G’s
Febreze brand.
Key Facts
•
Diverse organisations can
work in partnership across the
supply chain to trial new
approaches to recycling.
•
Sustainable behaviours, like
recycling, can be adopted, by
using prompts to encourage
consumers.
•
Product and packaging
designers need to engage
within the supply chain to
consider recyclability
opportunities.
Triggering a ‘fresh’ packaging recycling trial
2
Background
The majority of air care and home care
products, including air fresheners and
cleaning products, end up as post-consumer
waste that is not recycled, as they are
currently difficult to recycle due to their
different plastic polymers or components. It
is clear that involvement from stakeholders
across the supply chain is necessary to trial
ways to collect them for recycling.
A consortium, made up of P&G through its
Febreze brand, Somerset Waste Partnership
(SWP), Gloucestershire Joint Waste Team,
TerraCycle, Tesco and LRS, worked on a
project to investigate the effectiveness of
householder-led collection of trigger tops
and flip caps – very specific packaging
materials not generally collected for
recycling.
Labelled recycling container at a SWP Household
Recycling Centre
The project consisted of the operational
aspect of installing and managing recycling
containers at bring sites and various
communication routes for reaching residents
to persuade and encourage them to:
•
•
•
•
separate trigger tops and flip caps from
plastic bottles;
take the trigger tops and flip caps to the
trial’s facilities for recycling;
recycle the non-drinks plastic bottles,
like Febreze and Fairy, via their usual
household plastic bottle recycling
schemes; and
establish Air and Home Care Brigades
and collect and send appropriate plastic
packaging to TerraCycle for recycling.
Information in recycling flyer relating to the Air and
Home Care Brigade
Recycling containers were installed across
all 22 of the Gloucestershire County Council
and Somerset Waste Partnership Household
Recycling Centres (HRCs) and at 11 existing
recycling sites in the car parks of Tesco
stores across the two counties. The labelled
containers were situated adjacent to the
plastic bottle recycling containers to make
it easy for consumers to recycle plastic
bottles and trigger tops and flip caps
Triggering a ‘fresh’ packaging recycling trial
3
separately, in the same place and at the
same time.
As well as the availability of containers for
collecting the target material, schools,
community groups and charities were
encouraged to set up Air and Home Care
Brigades and collect trigger tops, flip caps
and a wider range of plastic air and home
care packaging materials, including air
freshener cartridges and flexible home
cleaning wipes packaging and send them to
TerraCycle for recycling, and by doing so,
raise money for charities.
To support the operational intervention
approaches, a communications strategy
informing residents about the different trial
messages, using Febreze and Fairy brands as
the focus, was developed and delivered
across channels relevant to the target
audiences in Gloucestershire and Somerset.
The channels used were: advertising
(posters, flyers and bin signage), public
relations, websites, social media,
newsletters, and internal partner
communications.
Poster indicating that target materials be taken to the
HRCs and Tesco bring sites and the bottles be put in
the usual SWP black household recycling box
Results
Media coverage was widespread in the main
local and industry publications, while the
other channels helped raise awareness of
the trial and encouraged participation.
The communications informed consumers
about what and where to recycle their
targeted packaging and as a result, a small
quantity was collected at bring site facilities
over the three month trial (November 2014
to March 2015).
On average, each Somerset HRC collected
2.37 kg and each Gloucestershire HRC 3.36
kg of target material for recycling during
the trial, whereas Tesco bring site recycling
bins captured only 0.26 kg.
Example flyer showing the trigger tops and flip caps
The most common type of contamination
included lids from plastic bottles (in
particular milk bottle lids), plastic bottles
(many with trigger tops still attached), soap
pumps, lids from plastic containers and
plastic bags. It is apparent that some
products’ trigger tops are not designed to
be removed from the bottles, making it
Triggering a ‘fresh’ packaging recycling trial
nearly impossible for consumers to separate
the requested packaging for recycling.
Feedback from HRC staff suggests that the
majority of the recycling of trigger tops and
flip caps occurred when consumers saw the
trial bins whilst bringing plastic bottles to
the HRC for recycling and consequently
separated the trigger tops and put them in
the trial’s containers.
During the trial, ten Air and Home Care
Brigades were established across the two
counties, although, due to the infrequent
nature of the target packaging arising as
waste, no shipment of materials was
received by TerraCycle from these new
members. TerraCycle did, however, receive
shipments from some of its existing Brigades
in Somerset and Gloucestershire. The
Brigades are continuing and TerraCycle is
likely to capture further materials as a
result of this trial at a later date.
A total amount of 67.9kg of trigger tops and
flip caps was sent to the TerraCycle
reprocessing facility at Preston, in
Lancashire. This will be combined with
other trigger tops collected by TerraCvcle
through their other Brigades established
across the UK to create a quantity of
material sufficient to be recycled into
products like bins or watering cans.
It must be stated that the short trial period,
the relatively limited budget for
communications, and a low number of
participants meant that the results only
provide an indication of what might happen
if bring facilities were widely rolled out, but
cannot be considered statistically
significant.
Conclusion
The project showed how diverse
organisations could work in partnership
across the supply chain toward a common
goal. In order to achieve higher levels of
post-consumer recycling for packaging that
arises infrequently in the waste stream and
continue to grow the national recycling
rate, there could be benefit from more
4
involvement from wider stakeholders in the
supply chain and more consideration given
to different approaches for collecting and
recycling these ‘challenging’ materials.
This project seemed to confirm the
difficulty involved in asking consumers to
take infrequently arising small packaging
items to a bring site to recycle. However, it
suggested that some residents would
participate when seeing the labelled
containers when recycling their plastic
bottles. The signage on the appropriately
situated trial recycling containers can prove
a useful prompt to stimulate participation.
It demonstrates a potential that once
residents are informed and reminded they
can and may try to use appropriate
recycling facilities.
It was also clear from the results that the
Air and Home Care Brigade collection
systems take a while to become established,
taking time to raise awareness about new
Brigades amongst communities and to
collect enough items to then post to
TerraCycle.
In terms of collecting this type of material,
trigger tops and flip caps were confused
with other tops and lids, which largely
resulted in high levels of contamination.
This reinforced the need for clarity in target
material description and type of plastic.
The contamination of plastic bottles with
immovable trigger tops also revealed that
designers and material choice decisionmakers need to engage within the supply
chain down-stream and upstream to
consider recyclability opportunities and
make considered decisions.
“Working with the partners
in the ‘trigger top’ trial
provided a good
opportunity for Febreze to
see how more of our
packaging could be
collected for recycling and
retained within the supply
chain.”
Aurelie Nomdedeu-Ducourtioux,
Air Care Global Marketing -
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