Stora Enso Inaugurates New Carton Recycling Process at Barcelona Mill

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Stora Enso's Barcelona Mill receives used milk and juice cartons from Spain, France, Portugal, and the U.K. The new recycling process enables full recovery of all of the materials used in the beverage cartons, including the fiber, plastic, and aluminum.

"The innovation is that we are now able to recycle all of the constituent parts of beverage cartons," says Håkan Molden, VP Carton Board at Stora Enso Packaging. "The fact that we are able to fully recycle the cartons means less waste going to landfill. It is good for the environment and the climate. It also makes great business sense as we are able to recover usable materials and recycle them into energy and new products."

The plastic-aluminum laminate from recovered beverage cartons is separated by the mill's new processing technology, thus enabling both fiber and aluminum to be fully reused and the plastic to be utilized to generate energy in the mill. The recovered fiber is used for the production of white lined chipboard at Stora Enso's Barcelona Mill.

The process is based on pyrolysis, i.e. heating up the material in the absence of oxygen. This makes the long chains of polyethylene divide into gases and light oils, while the aluminum remains un-oxidized and can be recycled and re-melted without problems. This is the first use of pyrolysis to separate plastic and aluminum.

The process was refined in collaboration by Stora Enso's Barcelona Mill and Alucha Recycling Technologies. The innovation was selected as a winner of the 2010 "Best of the Best" LIFE Environment Projects award, granted by the European Union to recognize projects that have a positive impact on the environment.