A circular solution
Asa Degerman, from Tork manufacturer Essity, discusses the challenges involved in rolling out the ground-breaking used paper towel recycling service, Tork PaperCircle, across the whole of Europe.
The idea of reusing and recycling products whenever and wherever possible has gained a huge amount of traction in recent years.
It is now second nature for most of us to recycle our paper and glass products and to take unwanted clothing to the charity shop, instead of throwing it away.
So, it’s no surprise that the idea of repurposing used hand towels in away-from-home washrooms has been well received by the public. In fact, it was customer demand that prompted Essity – one of the world’s leading hand towel manufacturers – to launch the first-ever hand towel recycling service just over two years ago.
Tork PaperCircle takes away customers’ used towels and recycles them, turning them into other paper products such as toilet paper and couch rolls. The service enables businesses to ‘go circular’ by closing the loop and providing a sustainable solution to an ongoing waste disposal problem. Yet the idea was four years in development and, despite being launched in 2017, it has still not been rolled out across the whole of Europe.
The reason for this is because the scheme poses multiple challenges. We began the Tork PaperCircle project by approaching a number of companies and asking them if we could set up pilot schemes at their premises.
We had to convince these firms of the benefits of the scheme at first: after all, why should companies care about what happens to their used hand towels once they have left their premises?
In order for the scheme to be viable and sustainable, our trial customers also needed to be based close to existing recycling facilities. And then there was the issue of re- educating washroom users and persuading them to recycle their towels, rather than simply throwing them away in the bin as they had always done.
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Making potential customers aware of the benefits of a hand towel recycling service was actually not a problem in the end. There has been a general shift towards sustainable thinking in recent years and the public is already convinced that recycling is the right thing to do.
Tork PaperCircle also offers key benefits for the customer: it can help companies to cut the carbon footprint of their hand towels by 40%, allowing them to meet their sustainability targets while making an important statement to employees and visitors.
However, re-educating the public not to bin their hand towels as usual was more of a challenge. The success of the scheme depends on the high quality of the paper being recycled, and the recycling bins need to consist of 98% pure paper towels in order to achieve the most efficient result at the mill. But we managed to overcome this issue by using clear signage to remind people to recycle their hand towels.
Most people tend to operate on autopilot when they visit a washroom so we used simple messaging to remind them where to put their used towels. Blue signs were used to direct visitors to key elements of the washroom including the water supply, the soap, and the paper towel recycling bin, while the bin for general refuse was marked with a contrasting yellow sign.
We worked with ‘nudging experts’ to come up with this concept in a bid to change people’s behaviour and show them where to recycle their towels. This ‘nudging’ system has worked well – in fact, environments such as airports have achieved recycling rates of around 97%, while offices have consistently hit our 98% compliance target.
The scheme has been more of a challenge in washrooms frequented by fewer visitors, however, but we are working to improve this situation through improved communication.
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