School Recycling programme on track with expansion plan

Used cartons can be recycled for notebooks, bio-roof panels, and more

The programme is the offspring of the collaboration between Hanoi’s and Ho Chi Minh City's Education and Training Department, Environment and Natural Resources Department, and programme stakeholders.

More than 1,400 kindergartens and primary schools in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City participate in the programme, all of whom have achieved positive results in training, guiding, and checking the categorising of used carton packages, thereby improving the quality of used carton to meet recycling requirements.

Participating in the programme, schoolchildren are instructed in the simple steps of unfolding the four corners of used cartons, flattening them, sticking covers to carton openings and placing them into dustbins for collection.

The used carton packages are then collected periodically every two weeks by Tetra Pak’s partners and transported to Dong Tien Paper Factory to become materials for the production of such useful products as notebooks and bio-roof panels, among others.

“We hold the ultimate goal that no cartons end up as litter or on the landfill and School Recycling is part of the long-term initiatives to achieve this goal. The aim of this programme goes beyond classifying and collecting used cartons at primary schools – it is to instill the good habit of recycling at the household level among the public,” said Ta Bao Long, head of Public Communications, Tetra Pak Vietnam.

“This is the first year that we deploy the programme on a large scale, following the successful pilot in Ho Chi Minh City in 2018-2019. We are glad to see positive programme deliverables which set a good example for different cities and provinces to learn from,” Long further commented.

Tetra Pak is actively engaged with community organisations to establish and expand its chain of public drop-off stations

Reviewing programme impacts on instilling in schoolchildren the habits of segregating and collecting used cartons, Nguyen Thi Phuong, a teacher at Mai Dong Kindergarten in Hanoi’s Hoang Mai district highlighted, “We pay particular attention to guiding pupils in how to deal with used cartons so that they can meet recycling requirements, thereby improving their awareness of environment protection.”

Phuong noted that after a long time of consistent practice, the pupils have established the good habit of flattening used cartons and placing them into collecting baskets for collection with little supervision from teachers.

“Our pupils’ habit remains unchanged after the COVID-19 quarantine. This very promising result is a great happiness for us as we are on track towards the programme goal,” Phuong said.

Apart from the programme of School Recycling, Tetra Pak is actively engaged with community organisations to establish and expand a chain of public drop-off stations so that consumers can bring their used cartons for collection and recycling. Tetra Pak currently has a network of more than 30 drop-off stations in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and other localities. The list of drop-off stations is available here.

Tetra Pak, a world-leader in food processing and packaging solutions provision, is an active catalyst for sustainability growth and a low-carbon circular economy. The company and other eight flagship consumer goods and packaging companies aligned to form a new recycling initiative called Packaging Recycling Organization Vietnam (PRO Vietnam) to ensure all packages by PRO members will be recycled by 2030.

Nearly 100 per cent of Tetra Pak’s cartons are made from Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper. As a recognition for Tetra Pak’s remarkable efforts, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry honoured Tetra Pak as Vietnam’s Top 10 Sustainable Business in the manufacturing sector in 2019.