One in five local authorities are now offering kerbside recycling collections for beverage cartons.

In 2007, less than 15% of local authorities offered any form of beverage carton collection. Eighty-six percent of local authorities now provide carton collection, but the majority are in the form of bring banks.

Fay Dashper, recycling operations manager at Tetra Pak, which has invested heavily in increasing collection of beverage cartons, said she hoped the kerbside collections would mean more cartons were recycled.

However, drinks cartons cannot currently be reprocessed in this country. Cartons collected for recycling are shipped to Sweden.

“We have undertaken trials with a number of UK mills and are committed to working with other partners in the paper industry to establish a carton reprocessing solution in the UK, but this is not a quick process,” Dashper said. “In the meantime, we are using a dedicated carton mill in Sweden.”