‘Pakistan recycling more Tetra Pak waste than Europe’

LAHORE: Pakistan has been recycling more than 41 percent waste of the Tetra Pak cartons, much higher than almost all of the European and other developed countries, an industry official said on Thursday.

“It is despite the fact those countries have created more awareness about recycling of the waste and keeping the environment clean and green,” said Zafar Bhatti, CEO Green Earth Recycling (GER), during a media visit to the first Pakistani sustainable recycling of waste factory of the country.

“The rate of waste recycling in Europe is in the range of 35-37 percent, while recycling of Tetra Pak cartons also falls in the range of 30s, which is much less than Pakistan’s over 41 percent.”

Further, Bhatti pointed out the plant was still operating at much lower than its full capacity due to low collection of recyclable Tetra Pak waste cartons from streets.

“Daily capacity of the Tetra Pak recycling plant is 70 tons, while so far only 50 tons of the recyclable waste material is collected from streets,” he said adding that almost 60-65 percent of it was collected from Punjab.

The pulp, obtained after recycling process, in finished and semi-finished forms was being supplied to top paper and paper-board producers of the country, the GER official informed the media.

Further, he said environmentally-friendly weather resistant GI (galvanised iron) sheets were being made from other components of the recycled material besides pulp.

“The demand of these sheets is so high that we have advance booking agreements of it for the next four months. However, due to the limited collection of the Tetra Pak cartons waste, the demand could not be met.”

Bhatti explained that both the Tetra Pak Pakistan and GER worked hard to achieve this target as the recycling at the plant was started with almost 5 tons a day, which had now reached at 50 tons a day.

“This means now substantial quantity of recyclable Tetra Pak cartons are being collected from the streets of the country and recycled; however, still a huge quantity of waste is not being lifted from the street for which more hard work is required.”

He said the GER was also collecting the Tetra Pak recyclable waste from Karachi.

“An agreement has recently been reached with the Clifton Cantonment Board, under which it will lift the recyclable Tetra Pak cartons from there and send them to Lahore for recycling.”

Bhatti said the recycling industry has huge untapped potential, but patience was required to reach break-even as GER had started its journey in 1994 to reach this point today.

“We aim to develop and implement environmentally-friendly systems and products in Pakistan, which will be sustainable in the long run and are also very keen on promoting alternate energies and developing new products based on alternate energy,” the GER official said.