Migros and Coop join forces New waste bag to close gap in recycling system
Until now, there has been no way to recycle beverage cartons and plastic. An initiative for which major retailers and food manufacturers have joined forces aims to change this.
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- From October, there will be a new waste bag for recycling drinks cartons and plastic packaging.
- Until now, there have only been regional solutions for this, which have not been able to achieve a nationwide effect.
- The organization behind the new recycling system is Recypac, an association of various industry giants from the retail and food production sectors.
- Because Switzerland does not have the necessary infrastructure, the actual recycling has to take place in neighboring countries.
The Recypac organization has big plans: Because it is not yet possible to dispose of beverage cartons and plastic packaging sustainably on a large scale, it announced last July that it would introduce a nationwide collection system in 2024 that would make this possible.
From next October, municipalities will have the opportunity to "introduce the Recypac system into their existing recycling infrastructure", as Managing Director Odile Inauen told CH Media. The goal: recycling rates of 55% for plastic packaging and 70% for beverage cartons - by 2030.
Association of industry giants
Recypac is backed by industry giants such as Migros, Coop, Aldi and Spar, as well as food manufacturers such as Nestlé and Unilever.
The merger was seen as a necessity because: Until now, there have only been individual regional initiatives, but these have hardly done justice to the effort required. Currently, the recycling rate for plastic packaging and beverage cartons is just three percent.
Inauen calls the "cooperation along the entire value chain" the "big advantage over the previous collection systems". The collected cardboard and plastic waste could now be turned into a high-quality recyclate.
Recycling takes place abroad
Municipalities and supermarkets can now decide whether they want to sell the Recypac collection bag. They then also provide the collection points where the filled bag can be returned.
However, the recycling process itself will not take place in Switzerland. Instead, the bags will be transported to Austria and southern Germany. Switzerland simply does not have the necessary infrastructure for this. In the long term, however, Recypac wants to ensure that this changes in the coming years.
However, criticism has come from Greenpeace Switzerland. The environmental protection organization criticizes the fundamentally wasteful nature of disposable packaging. The money flowing into the new recycling system would therefore be better invested if it were used to develop a sustainable reusable system.
