The Mirror sees our biggest paper recyclers working flat out this festive season
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If you think you’ve got your work cut out this Christmas, spare a thought for the staff of the UK’s largest paper recycling factory. Piles of giftwrap and cards in the average living room are a drop in the ocean compared to the daily lot of this hardworking team. Kemsley Paper Mill receives 144 lorries of waste a day to be recycled.
It is Europe’s second largest and processes 830,000 tons a year. Christmas is the busiest time and Black Friday has brought the festive rush much earlier. Operations director Guy Lacey says: “We get very, very busy in that period with packaging coming from people’s homes. Sometimes the recycling network really struggles with the volume.”.
One problem is that not all packaging is recyclable and gets mixed in with the all the stuff that is. Guy explains: “With the packaging that has glitter on it, we can’t really make good use of it. Anything that contains plastics or anything that is added to the product can cause us problems with the recycling or in the later process.”.
The Kent factory is run by DS Smith which recommends a ‘scrunch test’ before people stick wrapping paper in their recycling bins. If it stays scrunched up when you crumple it in your hand it is good to go. If not it has a plastic film so cannot be recycled.
Research by the London-based packaging giant estimates that the nation is set to waste 300,000 tons of packaging this festive season. Over a quarter of this could end up not being recycled. Contamination is a big reason it ends in landfill instead. In a perfect world, Guy believes everyone should have a separate bin for paper and cardboard.
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