Global Award for Crisp Return A Bag Scheme
Crisp Malt’s Return-a-Bag scheme has won a prestigious global award.
Author: Frances Brace
Red Flame Communications
RECYCLE YOUR MALT SACKS WITHOUT THE HASSLE
RMI, which delivers insights into brewing, distilling, malting and raw materials supply chains across the world, has presented Crisp with its highly coveted Innovation Award for the scheme.
As Ellie Wood, Crisp sustainability manager, points out, until recently, brewers were sending almost all their used polypropylene and polyethylene bags to landfill. Now, for the first time, and as an industry first, thanks to Crisp’s Return-a-Bag scheme, these sacks can be recycled. Already more than 5,000kg of them are being re-purposed into useful household or garden items.
“There were over 50 entries to the awards, with some fantastic initiatives from across the malting industry, so it was a real honour for our scheme to have been selected as a winner,” she says.
“The equivalent of over 60,000 25kg malt bags have so far been returned for processing and repurposing. The cumulative impact over time will be massive!”
solving an age old problem
“Return-a-Bag solves a problem for brewers and distillers that has been a long-standing challenge for decades. The Award will raise awareness of the scheme and get more brewers and distillers on board with it. That will add to the waste-savings.
“The equivalent of over 60,000 25kg malt bags have so far been returned for processing and repurposing. The cumulative impact over time will be massive!”
In fact, Return-a-Bag is industry inclusive, with acceptance of empty bags not just from Crisp, but from all malt suppliers. Ellie believes this approach played an important part in the recognition of award judges.
WRAP reports that just 10% of the 142 million tonnes of plastic packaging produced each year is effectively recycled. As a result, the remainder is sent to landfill, incinerated, or leaked directly into the environment. In particular, the kind of plastic used in malt sacks is not easily recycled, and in fact, only specialist facilities can process it and turn it into secondary raw material.
“It’s clear we need to work together to increase recycling of waste volumes. Therefore, we’d like to thank all our brewing and distilling customers who are currently doing just that by being part of Return-a-Bag.”
The logistics
The only cost to Crisp’s customers is transportation. In practice, they can organise their own transport of empty sacks – of any size – to the waste aggregation facility near Swindon, or alternatively, Crisp can arrange transport on their behalf. If you’re not yet involved, please check out the step-by-step guide here.
As Sam Wright from Howling Hops Brewery says of the scheme, “Very straightforward and easy for us. Simply, collecting all of our empty malt sacks on a pallet and getting it shipped off is very straightforward. Plus, it’s amazing that the recycling is free as well. Great to reduce our physical waste footprint!”
There is full traceability of waste volumes received and processed, so breweries and distilleries can use the information in their annual reporting.
RMI, commenting on the awards, said, “Inspiring to see such impactful initiatives shaping a more sustainable, innovative, and collaborative future for the industry.”
