The juice can you buy today could one day be part of a car bumper. Stora Enso's Barcelona board mill is using the world's first and only industrial-scale solution to efficiently recycle the aluminum and plastic from used cardboard packaging.
The Barcelona board mill separates aluminum and plastic from used cardboard packaging using a pyrolysis method that has long been used in the oil industry. Stora Enso has developed a pyrolysis solution for its own needs together with Spanish company Alucha Recycling Technologies.
In the method, plastic and aluminum are heated in a pyrolysis reactor to approximately 500 degrees Celsius in an oxygen-free environment. Used packaging treated with the method can be utilized XNUMX%.
Packaging fiber is used to make new cardboard for protecting food. Energy is produced from plastic, and aluminum is pressed into briquettes. The aluminum from used juice cans can later be used, for example, in car bumpers.
Up to 95 percent of milk and juice cans in southern Europe contain aluminum. An individual milk or juice can contains about 5 percent aluminum and 20 percent plastic. The remaining 75 percent is fiber.
Stora Enso's Barcelona board mill processes approximately 60 tonnes of juice can packaging annually, and it can recycle around half of this material.
“We started recycling carton packaging a few years ago with a moderate capacity, and we have recycled around a billion used juice cans annually. The results have been encouraging. We plan to build a second unit alongside the current one in the next few years,” says the carton mill director. Juan Vila says.
The full article can be read in Paperi ja Puu magazine, 3/2012.
