UPM sets ambitious responsibility targets for 2030

The print and paper advocacy group, Two Sides, is excited to announce its newest member, KPM Group, a print production, mail and media company based in Sevenoaks, Kent. “KPM Group are delighted to become a member of Two Sides. We work hard to understand our customer’s business challenges, to pinpoint where we can add value. As sustainability is an increasing factor on many of our customers minds, the facts that Two Sides have collected will help us to tell a positive environmental story around direct mail and in turn, help provide value to our customer’s DM campaigns.” says Marian Lively, Managing Director for KPM Group.

Earlier this year, European Aluminium and Metal Packaging Europe (MPE) launched a joint Roadmap to move toward achieving 100% aluminum beverage can recycling in Europe by 2030. While the record recycling rate for aluminum beverage cans sits at an impressive 76.1% in Europe¹, the industry recognizes that there is more work to do. Achieving the ambitious goal of a 100% real recycling rate in the next ten years will require close collaboration between aluminum sheet producers, can manufacturers, recycling facilities and consumers. Each party can join the pledge to the Roadmap and encourage their peers and communities to do more on the journey to accelerate sustainability. Our commitment toward achieving this goal is reflected in our own ambitious Twentyby30 program. The main components of our Twentyby30 initiative that cover recycling focus on two objectives: to raise recycling rates in our major markets, and as a result, to improve recycled content averages in our products.

"As far as recyclability is concerned, the plastic bottle is probably slightly better because it is likely only made from one plastic, and so is easier to recycle than a multilayer material like a beverage carton," says Rolf Buschmann, waste and resource expert with the German environmental organization BUND, who worked on the group's 2019 Plastic Atlas. He explains that only the paper part of the drink carton would be recycled — everything else, including the plastic coating or layer or aluminum foil, would be incinerated as residual waste. "In recent years there's been a trend toward so-called multilayer packaging, which is extremely light and thin. It saves material as well as CO2 emissions during transport, but can't be recycled," Christiani says. Because it is not possible to melt the different plastics together, or — at least for now — to separate the individual films from one another at recycling plants. A 2017 cyclos-HTP study into the recyclability of conventional packaging waste concluded that a third of it was not recyclable, and only 40% of the remaining two-thirds was made into plastic recyclate. The rest was used as fuel — in other words it was incinerated. click read more below for more of the story