Wholesaler drives sustainable beverage-packaging collections across Yorkshire and the north

For almost 14 years, WDS Group, a beer, wine and spirits wholesaler and distributor based in Bury, has been minimising its carbon footprint, operating a zero-landfill model and fully recycling all its trade waste.

The business now supports the beverage industry across Yorkshire and the north to be more sustainable. During its deliveries to pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants, WDS Group collects empty KeyKegs that may otherwise end up as landfill.

KeyKegs are sustainable, designed-for-circularity beer, wine and other beverage Kegs produced by OneCircle; once empty, they can be processed to recover the actual raw materials used to produce new KeyKegs.

WDS Group joined OneCircle's Return Partner Network in early 2019 and has already collected 65 tons of empty Kegs for recycling. During last summer alone, it collected 10,000 empty KeyKegs. As more empty Kegs are collected, the amount of circular material in each new KeyKeg will steadily increase, conserving precious natural resources.

Manchester’s Reserve Wines imports wine sustainably, direct from wineries in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Shipped in lightweight KeyKeg to reduce the environmental impact, the fresh wines are served in Reserve Wines’ bars and decanted into reusable bottles in its shops. WDS Group collects up to 100 empty KeyKegs per month from Reserve Wines.

Nic Rezzouk, a buyer at Reserve Wines, said: “With help from WDS Group we are able to make closed-loop recycling a success — we could not have achieved it alone.

“Our future focus is wine on tap, so with WDS Group and KeyKeg we can serve high-quality, delicious-tasting wines and be sustainable.”

WDS Group crush and bundle the empty KeyKegs for OneCircle to collect who then shreds, separates and sorts the different plastics on an automatic recycling line to recover the raw materials.

As much recycled material as possible is used to produce new KeyKeg parts, while the remainder is recycled for other uses.

Sam Evans, sales director at WDS Group, said: “We're happy to be part of KeyKeg closed-loop recycling, helping pubs, bars and restaurants return their empty Kegs for recovery of the materials used to make new Kegs.

“We want to continue collecting and recycling as many empty KeyKegs as we can to make a greater positive environmental impact.”