TNT Business Solutions, the outsourcing division of TNT Express Services UK & Ireland, has worked with one of the UK’s leading plastics recycling companies – Centriforce – to develop a recycling scheme which combines charity fund raising with environmental best practice.
TNT Business Solutions – specialists in outsourcing, logistics and information management – and Centriforce have pioneered an imaginative recycling arrangement which ensures that waste plastic generated in day to day operations is reprocessed into usable products.
The plastic is recycled from used polylope bags left over from TNT Business Solutions’ inter-site mail service provided to key clients, such as Barclays Bank and other customers. More than 342 tonnes of plastic waste from TNT Business Solutions and its customers were recycled last year with 162 tonnes so far this year.
The waste plastic is recycled at Centriforce’s Liverpool manufacturing centre into useful products, with a diverse range of end uses from garden benches and nature boardwalks, to animal pens and utility cable coverings.
Alistair Cochrane, Managing Director of TNT Express Services UK & Ireland,
said: “TNT Business Solutions provides inter-site mail services to customers across the UK. Office stationery and internal mail is transported in polylopes.
“Once the polylopes have been unpacked and held securely for 10 days, they are deemed waste. The plastic is then shredded and bailed ready for regular collections by Centriforce.”
Waste is a resource which reprocessors like Centriforce will pay for. TNT Express Services UK & Ireland donates any money made from recycling to the Wooden Spoon children’s charity. Last year, TNT’s corporate fundraising topped £3.25million for the Spoon.
Centriforce’s managing director Simon Carroll said: “Many people are unaware that the vast majority of plastics waste is shipped overseas. TNT deserves the highest praise for setting up an imaginative scheme which guarantees to keep the waste in the UK. As far as we are aware, no-one else has yet linked charity fundraising with recycling in this way.
“This scheme has been running successfully for the past six years and we hope it can set an example that both other logistics operators and the wider financial services sector could follow.”
The doubly-positive outcome of the scheme is welcomed highly by customers, helping TNT Business Solutions to build closer and long-lasting customer relationships and adding to the their own CSR credentials.