Tork PaperCircle introduced at AstraZeneca to help reduce carbon footprint

After a successful pilot at its UK headquarters, AstraZeneca is the first customer for paper hand towel recycling service Tork PaperCircle in the UK. The multinational pharmaceutical company behind one of the world’s most widely-administered COVID-19 vaccines has been trialling Tork PaperCircle at its Cambridge site since May 2021.

Essity’s Tork PaperCircle is believed to be the world’s first recycling service for paper hand towels. Tork PaperCircle customers have their used paper hand towels picked up from their facilities and taken to the local Essity mill where they are turned into new tissue products. Tork PaperCircle helps customers to meet their sustainability targets by reducing waste by up to 20% and cutting carbon emissions by up to 40% compared with other waste management systems.

Tork PaperCircle has been in operation since 2016 and is available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Denmark, and more recently, the UK and France at more than 150 locations.

AstraZeneca was already signed up to Tork PaperCircle in Sweden, so it was a logical step for the company to extend the service to its Cambridge facility in the UK. The AstraZeneca UK trial, co-ordinated by Sodexo, was highly successful and the company now plans to roll out Tork PaperCircle to all its the laboratory hand wash areas and potentially across the rest of its Cambridge Granta Park site.

www.tork.co.uk/papercircle