We use enough single-use pouches to cover the surface of the UK 2x over every single day
Billions of pet food pouches are currently sent to landfill. (1) Every year 10 billion pouches made of aluminium plastic are sold in pet food, baby food and drinks with a shocking rate of only 20,000 of these currently recycled. This recycling rate of pouches is 50 times worse of that of single coffee cups that have received so much media attention (2/3). With a typical cat food owner using 1000 pouches a year and 1.1 million cats in the UK the scale of the issue is staggering.
Introducing Purr-cycle
Ahead of Pooch & Mutt’s launch of our new cat food brand Purr and Miaow, we are launching a recycling scheme for pet food pouches, tackling one of the biggest environmental issues that face pet owners.
Purr and Miaow’s ‘Purr-cycle’ scheme is one of the UK’s first national pet pouch recycling scheme. The scheme will operate on a not-for-profit basis, so no more pouches need to go to landfill.
Purr and Miaow founder, Guy Blaskey commented, “From our research, we know that cat owners love feeding cat pouches more than any other format but we know that they want to be more environmentally friendly. For dogs, we launched in Tetrapak which is a more environmentally-friendly option than a can or plastic tray. However, as yet, there isn’t an environmentally-friendly, small-format alternative to pouches. We couldn’t in good conscience launch pouches without creating a way to recycle them. We have done a lot of work on this to get this ready even before our cat products launch so we have released it early to let people start recycling.”
Consumers are being misled by Big Pet Food manufacturers
Many Big Pet Food brands mislead their consumers by placing a circular arrow on their packaging which means that the producer has made a financial contribution towards recovering and recycling packaging in Europe but does not mean that the product is recycled. Currently, in the UK, there is no solution to recycle pet food pouches.
So how does Purr-cycle actually work?
For our customers, it’s a simple process. They order 10 recycling bags from Purr-cycle for £9.99 by visiting www.purrandmiaow.co.uk/recycle. They’ll receive 10 prepaid envelopes to post their pouches back which will let them recycle up to 250 pouches (only 4p per pouch!).
The price of £9.99 only covers the postage to our customers, 10 Freepost envelopes back and the recycling. We’ll make no profits on Purr-cycle! We know that people are willing to pay more as they feel more environmentally conscious as reusable coffee cup purchases have soared throughout the UK in recent years.
Let's stop wasting enough pouches to cover the UK 150x a day and start recycling today with Purr-cycle - no profits and no waste.
Read more about the disastorous effects of non recyclable cat food pouches here
References:
- https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/billions-of-food-pouches-go-to-landfill-c7hf6lwc6
- https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/disposable-coffee-cups-how-big-problem-environment-landfill-recycling-incinerate-export-rubbish-a8142381.html
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/11/uk-retailers-see-rise-in-sales-of-reusable-coffee-cups