Smurfit Kappa Recycling Targets Community Spaces Across the UK for World Clean Up Day

Smurfit Kappa Recycling staff across the UK took part in a huge litter-pick to mark World Clean Up Day last weekend. A total of 76 staff spent over 150 hours cleaning up woodland, lakes, canals and hedgerows in their local communities, collecting over 75 bags of litter.

Community sites cleaned included 13km of the Coventry Canal between Grendon and Tamworth; Halling Village, near Smurfit Kappa’s paper mill in Snodland, Kent; Colwick Country Park in Nottingham; Kinning Park in Glasgow; Haggs Fishing Lodge and Park in Accrington, Lancashire, and St Vincent’s School and Adderley Park, near Smurfit Kappa’s other UK paper mill in Birmingham. An average of 50kg of litter was collected per site which was then segregated into different waste streams for recycling.

It was a great team-building activity, involving staff across all departments including drivers, office staff and management. In Snodland and Birmingham the recycling teams joined forces with colleagues from their respective Smurfit Kappa paper mills. 

Staff were encouraged by members of the public who stopped to show their appreciation - or thanked them as they passed by on barges or bicycles! Several depot teams are now planning to return to the sites on a more regular basis. Smurfit Kappa Recycling’s Nottingham depot for example will return to Colwick Country Park to refurbish its benches.

Chris Collier, Managing Director, Smurfit Kappa Recycling UK, said: “It was a privilege for Smurfit Kappa Recycling to take part in World Clean Up Day. I was delighted by the impressive efforts of staff from our recycling depots across the UK, and the diversity of the projects they got involved in. World Clean Up Day has given us all a renewed connection with some of the beautiful spaces just around the corner from our recycling depots. It is important to us that we live by our sustainability promise outside of work and have a positive impact on our local environments and communities.”

Part of Smurfit Kappa Group, the world’s largest fibre-based packaging group, Smurfit Kappa Recycling UK provides a full spectrum of bespoke paper and board recycling solutions for businesses and organisations of all sizes including recovery of cardboard, office papers and plastics and security shredding. The Group paper mills in Birmingham and Kent reprocess 500,000 tonnes of material per annum, providing a reliable, closed-loop domestic market for recovered paper and card. This enables Smurfit Kappa UK to collect and recycle as much paper-based packaging as it produces. Smurfit Kappa Recycling UK operates nationwide and has depots at the following locations: Birmingham, Snodland, Tamworth, Nottingham, Blackburn, and Glasgow.