THE Highland Council has awarded a new contract for the provision of mixed paper and cardboard treatment services with haulage to Smurfit Westrock.
Covering a period of up to six years, the contract will see approximately 11,500 tonnes of mixed paper and card transported from the local authority’s waste transfer stations to Smurfit Westrock’s Glasgow recycling facility annually.
The mixed paper and card will be graded and baled at the Glasgow facility, to ensure the best quality feedstock for the paper making process. The baled material will then be transported to Smurfit Westrock’s two recycling paper mills within the UK for processing into brown paper reels – these are then distributed to their 32 packaging plants and manufactured into new high quality consumer packaging products.
Chair of the Highland Council communities and place committee, councillor Graham MacKenzie, said, “I am delighted that Highland Council has awarded a new contract to Smurfit Westrock to collect and recycle the paper, card and cardboard from the region.
“Securing this contract, is another important milestone for Highland Council, helping to ensure we have long term and robust end markets for the material the public separate for recycling.
“Keeping the paper and card, dry and free of moisture is very important to the quality of the material and by separating the recycling collected at the kerbside into two bins – paper/card into the blue bin and mixed plastic and metal containers into the green bin, this significantly helps to improve the quality and boost recycling rates.
“Initial feedback from Smurfit Westrock on the quality of the paper and card from Highland is positive and that the quality of the material is good. This is really reassuring, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the public for their time and effort with the new recycling services.
Lucy Russell, Smurfit Westrock UK MD, added, “We are delighted to be working with The Highland Council collecting paper and card that can be used as quality feedstock for our UK-based paper mills and look forward to the completion of the rollout.”
