PullApart was a UK-based, independent packaging

recycling Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the propert ...

classification system. Applied at the kerbside, it combined

environmental Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

and

consumer A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or use purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...

packaging surveys to provide customers with a measurement of the ease with which specific types of packaging could be locally recycled. The process was invented by Michael Butler of

Dawlish Dawlish is a seaside resort town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Teignbridge district in Devon, England. It is located on the south coast of England at a distance of from the city of Exeter and a similar distance from the to ...

in 2005, and operated for free.

Methodology

As PullApart was applied to existing

local authority Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

-installed recycling bin

refuse collection Waste collection is a part of the process of waste management. It is the transfer of solid waste from the point of use and disposal to the point of list of waste treatment technologies, treatment or landfill. Waste collection also includes th ...

systems, its scoring scheme was dependent on individual local authorities’ own packaging disassembly practices. Sample packaging was disassembled, according to the Local Authority’s process, rearranged and its components graded for ease of recycling. The raw information from this exercise was also made available to the public. A final, consumer-oriented "PAC" (PullApart Code) score was achieved by measuring what proportion of a product's components was recyclable from the kerbside. The PAC score is represented by 13 stages of ‘traffic light’ grading.

Broader aims

PullApart’s stated aims are to encourage,

manufactures Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

retailers Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler ...

food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for Nutrient, nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or Fungus, fungal origin and contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein (nutrient), proteins, vitamins, ...

and

agricultural Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...

producers to give greater weight to the ease of disposal and recycling in their

packaging Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coo ...

designs. Weighting the consumers point of view equally to that of packaging manufactures, retailers and recyclers, in the handling of domestic waste products for kerbside collections. To provide consumers with information enabling product choice (

ethical consumerism Ethical consumerism (alternatively called ethical consumption, ethical purchasing, moral purchasing, ethical sourcing, or ethical shopping and also associated with sustainable and green consumerism) is a type of consumer activism based on the conc ...

), that's easy, local and totally kerbside recyclable. Furnishing an unambiguous tool, that measures the differences between those mentioned above, assisting in the optimisation of products for the goal of near

Zero waste Zero waste, or ''waste minimization'', is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed (i.e. "up-cycled") and/or reused. The goal of the movement is to avoid ...

. According to PullApart’s then current

Teignbridge Teignbridge is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council is based in the town of Newton Abbot. The district also includes the towns of Ashburton, Buckfastleigh, Dawlish, Kingsteignton and Teignmouth, along with numerous vi ...

(2011) survey of over 2000 products, 2.84% were ideally suited for kerbside recycling and a further 29.32% were good, whilst the rest failed. The sample area, Teignbridge, and therefore Teignbridge District Council, had a current recycling rate of 57% (2008/2009), (by weight). Quoting from their

periodical Periodical literature (singularly called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) consists of Publication, published works that appear in new releases on a regular schedule (''issues'' or ''numbers'', often numerically divided into annu ...

, “Teignbridge Life” explaining to local people how PullApart worked: “The online packaging recycling guide features a free search function which classifies ordinary consumer products, like cereal boxes, with a 'PullApart' rating. The rating breaks the product down into its components, explaining which parts can be recycled in Teignbridge.”

Scoring system

A simplified mathematical representation of PullApart's kerbside scoring system for determining local recyclability only, by weight: :A packaging's non-recyclable is divided by its recyclable. If <= 1 then it is considered "good"; if > 1 it is "bad". :The nearer to zero it is, the better; the greater above 1, the worse. Weight is not the only consideration, there are others including volume, therefore the analysis is more complex than the above. From a local consumer's perspective, the combined effectiveness of both packaging and their local kerbside recycling is simply determined by: :The percentage of easy “green” packaging (taken from PullApart's 2011 survey), divided by the number of kerbside collection bins and bags. For Teignbridge areas A and B in 2001 this was 8.04 (32.16% / 4), and for their communal area C it was 5.36 (32.16% / 6). These scores are out of a maximum of 100 (for frictionless “green” kerbside packaging into just one collection bin or bag).

Awards for the scheme

PullApart is considered to be of “Environmental Best Practice” by The Green Organisation.

Comparison with other efforts

Worldwide there are broader packaging scoring systems that address the full environmental impact of packaging. Recycling being one factor, other vital considerations include the use of recycled materials in the package, avoidance of toxic substances, minimization of packaging, effects on atmosphere (greenhouse gas, VOC, etc.), use of

renewable resource A renewable resource (also known as a flow resource) is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of t ...

s, etc. Efforts involve methodologies such as

life cycle assessment Life cycle assessment (LCA), also known as life cycle analysis, is a methodology for assessing the impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufact ...

to inventory the all environmental impacts and factors. There are many

Sustainability metrics and indices Sustainability metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, using numbers to quantify environmental, social and economic aspects of the world. There are multiple perspectives on how to measure sustainability as there is no universal stand ...

, some specifically for packaging.

References