Used cartons for a good cause

SIG is show­cas­ing how com­pa­nies and com­mu­ni­ties can come togeth­er to turn waste into val­ue through an inno­v­a­tive ‘eco-can­teen’ made almost entire­ly from used bev­er­age car­tons at a school in Thailand.

Opened in Sep­tem­ber 2018, the can­teen is a shin­ing exam­ple to encour­age more recy­cling by demon­strat­ing the val­ue it can bring to com­mu­ni­ties. The 170 chil­dren at the school can now drink their milk from car­tons in a can­teen made of car­tons, tak­ing a clear mes­sage on recy­cling home to their families.

“The eco-can­teen is a great way to bring recy­cling to life by show­ing chil­dren – and their par­ents – what hap­pens to the car­tons after they drink their milk. Help­ing chil­dren under­stand how recy­cling can help the envi­ron­ment is real­ly impor­tant because they are the con­sumers of tomorrow.”

Cha­tramol Intra­sorn, School Direc­tor at Nikom Sang Ton Eang school

From cartons to canteen

SIG teamed up with Kaset­sart Uni­ver­si­ty, the food man­u­fac­tur­er Ampol Foods and the Fiber Pat­tana recy­cling plant to design and rebuild the can­teen at the Nikom Sang Ton Eang pri­ma­ry school near the company’s pro­duc­tion site in Ray­ong, Thailand.

Togeth­er with Kaset­sart Uni­ver­si­ty, one of the lead­ing pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties in Thai­land, the com­pa­ny ran a com­pe­ti­tion to design a ful­ly func­tion­al school can­teen built from used and recy­cled bev­er­age car­tons. The next chal­lenge was to source the mate­ri­als ready for construction.

More than 1.4 mil­lion car­tons went into the can­teen. Fiber Pat­tana sup­plied the tiles for the roof and pan­els for the walls, made out of alu­mini­um and poly­mers from used car­ton packs col­lect­ed main­ly from schools. The chip­board tables and chairs were pro­duced from car­tons recy­cled by Ampol Foods, a SIG cus­tomer that runs its own recy­cling plant for bev­er­age cartons.

Increas­ing recy­cling rates is part of SIG’s mis­sion to go Way Beyond Good – to put more into the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety than it takes out – and aware­ness rais­ing is a key focus for the company’s com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment activities.

“The eco-can­teen serves as a mod­el for SIG’s car­tons and col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to bring ben­e­fits to com­mu­ni­ties and raise aware­ness of how recy­cling can help the envi­ron­ment. This inno­v­a­tive approach offers excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for sim­i­lar projects to extend pos­i­tive impacts in oth­er regions.”

Navapol Chuen­siri, Head of Clus­ter Asia-Pacif­ic South at SIG