The discussions that transpired at the company’s annual event were regarding the developments of Action Alliance for Recycling beverage Cartons (AARC), which was formed by Tetra Pak, F&B brands, carton packaging manufacturers, and other member organisations, in 2018.

Praveen Aggarwal, CEO, AARC, said, “Tetra Pak has proactively invested the past 16 years in building a strong ecosystem to ensure collection and recycling of paper-based cartons. This ecosystem includes various stakeholders from the local government, civil society, and waste trade to consumers who must play an active role to make recycling truly sustainable.”

At present, AARC includes 17 member organisations representing various F&B and pharma segments, and paper-based packaging manufacturing majors such as Tetra Pak and SIG Combibloc.

“At AARC, we are committed to further build upon this strong base and increase collections by at least 20 % and expand the collection footprint from 23 cities today to 35 over the next two to three years. This will in turn help increase the recycling rate significantly,” added Aggarwal.

At the event, Amardeep Raju, assistant director – Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change spoke about the steps taken by the government to promote waste management in the country. He highlighted the importance of stakeholders in the ecosystem and the integration of technological interventions such as GPS tracking. He also notified about the development of a national EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) framework.

Ashutosh Manohar, managing director – Tetra Pak South Asia, said, “We started our recycling journey 16 years ago, long before it became front and centre of discussions across the country, and we are thankful for the support of all our partners who have helped take carton package recycling to over 50% today. With AARC bringing together resources and experience from across the F&B industry, we are very excited about the new milestones that we can reach together as an industry.”

In addition to the AARC initiative, the event also shed light on Tetra Pak’s flagship programme ‘Go Green with Tetra Pak’ that started in 2010 in Mumbai. It works on raising consumer awareness about recycling of used carton packages. This programme inspires consumers to deposit used cartons at over 200 drop off points across the city and help convert them into desks for lesser privileged schools. And Alag Karo – a waste management programme run by Tetra Pak, in partnership with Giz and Coca-Cola India in Gurugram. This program is in its third year of running and works to promote waste segregation at source across the city.