Greene King pubs to accept hard-to-recycle plastic chocolate and biscuit tubs that will be turned into charitable donations
Pub company Greene King is partnering with two specialist recycling businesses to turn hard-to-recycle plastic into much needed cash for Macmillan Cancer Support and is calling on the public to participate.
Consumers and businesses are being encouraged to drop off their used plastic confectionery and biscuit tubs at any of Greene King’s managed pubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK. The tubs will be taken to a specialist recycling facility and processed into granulated recycled plastic. Each tub equates to approximately eight pence and money is raised by selling the recycled plastics, with the profit going to Greene King’s charity partner, Macmillan Cancer Support.
Greene King is partnering with co-cre8; specialists in creating solutions for hard-to-recycle materials and responsible for attracting large businesses to support the campaign and DCW Polymers, which will use its high-tech plastic reprocessing plant to shred and granulate the tubs ready for sale to manufacturers, in place of virgin plastic.
Vance Fairman-Smith, Greene King’s supply chain director, said: “Earlier this year, we announced we were the first pub company to achieve the Carbon Trust’s Zero Waste to Landfill Standard, and we’re continually looking at how we can tackle waste and help the environment through recycling. We’re really excited to be able to offer this recycling facility to our customers but also to support Macmillan, which needs help more than ever following the huge gap in donations following the Covid 19 crisis.”
“This is a great way of not just helping charity but also the environment”, says Peter Goodwin, co-cre8’s Co-founder.
“DCW Polymers successfully tested this scheme last year in Devon, with more than £1,200 raised for charity. Such was the appetite, we are now ready to take it nationwide and, together with the backing of Greene King, we hope turn it into an annual post-Christmas event”, added Peter.
It is estimated that well over 100 million tubs of chocolates, sweets and biscuits are sold in the UK each year; with Christmas accounting for as much as forty per cent of all sales. These tubs are typically made from polypropylene; a hard plastic that is not always accepted by local authorities for recycling, resulting in it, instead, being incinerated or landfilled.
Greene King will be accepting tubs between the 1 and 31 of January 2021. Since many areas of the UK are now subject to restrictions, customers can check the ‘PubHub’ guide to find out if their local Green King pub is open for business by visiting https://www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk/pubs-near-me
