Global Recycling Day 2024: Celebrating Closed Loop Recycling Heroes

This year’s Global Recycling Day’s theme was Recycling Heroes, and we are proud to showcase our client and recycling partner who are closing the loop on UK plastic waste and are our 2024 Recycling Heroes. 

First, our client, fashion and home ware retailer, Freemans Grattan Holdings. In 2023, Freemans recycled a huge 74 tonnes of post-consumer polythene waste in our closed loop recycling system. That’s the equivalent carbon saving of 12 flights around the world.

How did they do this? Freeman’s introduced a polythene segregating process at their returns centre where any post-consumer polythene waste from product returns was segregated from other materials. The segregated waste was then baled into a compact, easy to transport cube. Upon delivery of new packaging products we collected the baled polythene waste and recycled it in our UK closed loop recycling system. To increase their recycling efforts further, Freemans introduced branded recycling bins with educational messages to educate the team and inform how to separate clear plastic waste from coloured polythene (jazz). Their efforts helped keep post-consumer polythene waste in the economy and available for recycling into high-quality recycled polythene which packaging manufacturers, like Duo, can use instead of virgin polythene material. 

To mark this achievement, we presented the Freemans’ team with a certificate which proudly states the amount of polythene they recycled in 2023 plus the equivalent carbon saving, a box of heroes’ chocolates (of course!) plus we made a donation of 10 trees to be planted on their behalf in Greater Manchester with the GM City of Trees. Congratulations Freemans!