Greene King, the UK’s largest pub company and brewer, is once again calling on its customers to bring their empty plastic confectionery tubs to its pubs in an effort to reduce waste and raise money for Macmillan.
Tens of millions of tubs containing chocolates, sweets and biscuits are sold in the UK each year, with the majority sold during the Christmas period. 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.
Customers 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. The money is raised by selling the recycled plastics with the profits, approximately eight pence for each tub, going to Greene King’s charity partner, Macmillan Cancer Support. If every tub sold in the UK over the Christmas period was recycled this way, it would raise almost £400,000 in donations.
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: “We’re really pleased to be able to provide this recycling service to our local communities across the country. This is a ‘win win’ situation as we look to save the plastic tubs going to landfill and at the same time being able to support our national charity partner, Macmillan.”
“This is a great way of not just helping charity but also the environment”, says Peter Goodwin, co-cre8’s Co-founder.
“This year we really expect the campaign to take off with as many 1,700 Greene King pubs getting behind it. Clearly, last year’s campaign was greatly impacted due to COVID restrictions, and yet despite the fact that all pubs were closed, more than five thousand tubs were collected,”, said Peter.
Greene King will be accepting tubs during the whole of January 2022. To check whether your tubs are suitable for participating in the scheme look for the symbol, below, stamped into the outside base of the tub.
