International Visit of Made-in-Canada Carton Recovery and Recycling Know-How

Colleagues from Switzerland and the United States were highly impressed with the advances in carton recovery and recycling that they observed on a recent North American tour that brought them to Québec last month. The goal of their visits was to get a better picture of the carton recovery and recycling landscape here in Canada, the possibilities for development, and practices with potential to be shared internationally.

First stop: Sustana, Lévis

Markus Pfanner, Global Vice President, Sustainability, at Tetra Pak (a CCC member company) and Jason Pelz, who holds the same role at the company for the United States and Canada, began their series of visits, accompanied by Council Managing Director Isabelle Faucher, at the Sustana paper mill in Lévis, Québec. In 2020, this facility began incorporating post-consumer carton fibres in the high-quality pulp that it produces. During the visit, Sustana outlined the progress made on its major mill expansion project, which should see carton recycling increase to some 20,000 tonnes per year. The visitors were enthusiastic about Sustana’s transformation process, especially the step that involves shredding the cartons prior to their pulping. Though this step has yet to be adopted by all paper mills that recycle cartons, it’s clear that it greatly enhances the performance of recycling operations.

Visiting the Sustana Lévis mill: Jason Pelz (Tetra Pak), Jean-Sébastien Foisy (Sustana), Isabelle Faucher (CCC), Angela Peterson (Tetra Pak), Patrick Cloutier (Sustana), Markus Pfanner (Tetra Pak), Aaron Ling (Sustana).

Patrick Cloutier describes Sustana’s expansion plans, which should enable 20,000 tonnes of cartons to be recycled yearly.

The innovative carton shredding stage at Sustana, which enhances recycling performance.

Second stop: Machinex, Plessisville

The delegation then made its way to Plessisville, in the Centre-du-Québec region, and the head office of Machinex, a leading supplier of equipment and solutions for material-recovery facilities and deposit-return programs that has a growing international presence. The company’s expansion is reflected in its campus, which occupies a growing footprint on the outskirts of this municipality with a population of approximately 7,000. Among other things, Machinex presented its latest technology dedicated to deposit-return systems, including the MACH CountAIner, which processes bulk returns of redeemable containers and can recognize up to 600 containers per minute!

At Machinex: Jason Pelz (Tetra Pak), Sophie Langlois-Blouin (Machinex), Sébastien Roy (Machinex), Isabelle Faucher (CCC), Angela Peterson (Tetra Pak), Markus Pfanner (Tetra Pak).

Charles-Henri Caron gives a presentation on Machinex technologies.

Third stop: Consignaction, Montréal

The Canadian leg of the delegation’s visit ended in Montréal. They visited two of the new return sites operated by Consignaction, Québec’s beverage container deposit-refund program which is overseen by the Québec Beverage Container Recycling Association (QBCRA). Consignaction is in the midst of an expansion phase with the addition of new types of containers to the program and the roll out of an extended network of next-generation return sites. Cartons are now expected to be added to the list of redeemable containers on March 1, 2027. The visitors were very impressed by the return sites, which combine state-of-the-art technology and convenience. Besides Consignaction, all other deposit-return programs in Canada incorporate beverage cartons. These programs, which are among the only ones in the world to do so, prove that it is possible to recover cartons through a deposit-return scheme. These are experiences that Markus Pfanner, Jason Pelz and their colleagues plan to share with other parts of the world.

At Consignaction: Roland Haddad (Consignaction), Mario Godin (Consignaction), Angela Peterson (Tetra Pak), Normand Bisson (Consignaction), Isabelle Faucher (CCC), Jason Pelz (Tetra Pak), Markus Pfanner (Tetra Pak).

Before arriving in Québec, the tour had begun in the U.S. with visits to a modern sorting facility in Chicago and to two carton end-market players, Continuus Materials in Iowa and Sustana De Pere in Wisconsin.