Crisp Malt’s Return-a-Bag scheme, which saw 3,662kg of waste malt sacks recycled last year, has won a global award.
Sam Wright, of Howling Hops Brewery, with Ellie Wood, sustainability manager of Crisp, and a pallet of malt sacks ready to be recycled
RMI, which delivers insights into brewing, distilling, malting, and raw materials supply chains across the world, has presented Crisp with its Innovation Award.
Until recently, brewers were sending almost all their used polypropylene and polyethylene bags to landfill. Now, in an industry first, thanks to Crisp’s Return-a-Bag scheme, these sacks can be recycled.
“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,” said Ellie Wood, sustainability manager at Crisp.
“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, the global environmental action group, reports that just 10% of the 142 million tonnes of plastic packaging produced each year is effectively recycled, with the remainder sent to landfill, incinerated, or leaked directly into the environment. The kind of plastic used in malt sacks is not easily recycled. Only specialist facilities can recycle and make it into secondary raw material.
“It’s clear we need to work together to increase recycling of waste volumes,” said Ellie. “And 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 only cost to Crisp’s customers is transportation. They can organise their own transport of empty sacks — of any size — to the waste aggregation facility, near Swindon, or Crisp can organise transport on their behalf. Find out more about the scheme here.
“Collecting all of our empty malt sacks on a pallet and getting it shipped off is very straightforward,” said Sam Wright, of Howling Hops Brewery.”Amazing that the recycling is free, as well. Great to reduce our physical waste footprint!”
