Kraft Foods launches Kenco recycling brigade

Following a successful roll out in the US, global food giant Kraft Foods is to launch an innovative new recycling scheme designed to encourage consumers to return their food packaging.

The initiative, which is being carried out in partnership with recycling charity TerraCycle, will initially involve the company's Kenco and Tassimo coffee brands. Consumers will be encouraged to form volunteer brigades to collect waste coffee refill packs from pre-defined locations and send them to a central facility for processing.

Kraft will cover all postage costs and and will donate two pence to the charity of the volunteer's choice in return for each piece of packaging collected.

TerraCycle will also collect packaging materials from Kraft Foods' factories to recycle alongside the consumers' waste.

Peter Seymour, UK and Nordic coffee category director at Kraft Foods, said that the company was keen to replicate TerraCycle's success in the US - where the charity has collected more than a billion pieces of packaging and raised more than $100,000 (£61,315) for charity.

"[TerraCycle is] an innovative company which has already had great success collecting packaging waste that would otherwise have been sent to landfill," he said. "By working with TerraCycle UK, we hope to get Kenco and Tassimo consumers thinking about waste."

According to recycling charity Wrap, an estimated 6.3 million tonnes of packaging comes into British homes each year, the majority of which ends up in landfill.