THE PERENNIAL problem of what to do with leftover tubs of festive chocolate has been solved.
Millions of us have scoffed Quality Street, Celebrations and Roses over the Christmas period, and been left with plastic tubs that are hard to recycle … until now.
Pub chain Greene King is welcoming clean, empty tubs which it will recycle to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support.
The tubs are typically made from polypropylene; a hard plastic that is not always accepted by local authorities for recycling, resulting in it being incinerated or landfilled.
All Greene King pubs, restaurants and hotels across the country are taking the empties, which will be sent to a specialist recycling facility and processed into granulated recycled plastic.
The money is raised by selling the recycled plastics with the profits, approximately 8p per tub, goes to the charity. Greene King estimates that if every tub sold in the UK over the Christmas period was recycled this way, it would raise almost £400,000.
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.”
Greene King is partnering with co-cre8; specialists in recycling hard-to-recycle materials 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.
“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 5,000 tubs were collected.”
Greene King will be accepting tubs during the whole of January.
For details, log on to tub2pub.co.uk
