Step 2: Recycling

Recycling is an area where Altro has set itself extremely ambitious targets. Like most manufacturing businesses we have, in the past, sent large quantities of waste to Landfill sites. As we embarked on our sustainability journey one of the first things we looked at was ways of reducing this.

Through a series of operational changes we have now reached a point where 100% of production waste is recycled. The next big step is to tackle post consumer and installation waste.

Altro has signed up to a trial with WRAP, a government initiative that collects post installation waste for recycling. To make this easier in the future we are now manufacturing flooring products that are easier to separate from other non-recyclable products at the end of their lifecycle.

In addition we are also members of EPFLOOR and are working with Vinyl 2010 (the European PVC Voluntary Commitment to the European Commission). Vinyl 2010 has targets of recycling 200,000 tonnes of post consumer PVC waste by 2010. All progress is monitored independently and documentation is available at www.vinyl2010.org

Packaging is another area Altro has looked at closely and new batch packaging technology has now been installed on 2 out of our 3 manufacturing lines. This technology uses packaging that is 100% recyclable as cardboard and, in the near future, we will extend this so that all of our packaging is totally recyclable.

At one time Altro was sending 80 tonnes of plastic packaging straight to Landfill every year. We’re now close to the point where all of our packaging is 100% recyclable. As always, we’re looking for ways to improve and we’re working hard alongside our customers and external agencies to tackle the important issues.