Recycled Milk Bottle Meets with Success

WRAP’s project to develop recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) milk bottles, delivered by core project team Nextek, Nampak and Dairy Crest, won a gold award for the Best Use of an Innovative Material, as well as a bronze award for the Best Innovation to Reduce Waste.

The Starpack Awards commend innovation across consumer and industrial packaging markets and materials. As the UK packaging industry’s most prestigious awards, Starpack aims to help raise packaging standards in the UK by recognizing and encouraging creativity. This year’s awards attracted more than
“This project clearly demonstrates that milk bottles containing recycled material can be as good as 100 percent virgin bottles in terms of safety, production, filling and transportation. We also received very positive consumer responses to the recycled content packaging,” says James Tunney, customer market manager at Dairy Crest PLC.

Plastics Technology Manager at WRAP Dr. Paul Davidson says these awards are an excellent example of how the packaging industry is responding to environmental and sustainability challenges.

The project won two awards for developing a world leading recycling technology that has enabled the closed loop recycling of milk bottles. The process takes milk bottles from curbsides and drop-off programs in the UK and recycles them back into new milk bottles. By incorporating 30 percent recycled content into all 130,000 tons of plastic milk bottles used within the UK dairy industry, more than 39,000 tons of material would be saved.

A large-scale trial was completed as part of this project, and during December 2006 Marks & Spencer used 60,000 four-pint milk bottles to package its milk. Following the success of the trial, Marks & Spencer is now selling its organic milk in bottles that have 10 percent recycled content.

Packaging containing recycled material has to meet the same high specifications as virgin materials, and the milk bottles containing 30 percent recycled HDPE were rigorously tested and passed all UK, EU and consumer tests.

“This proven technology will significantly enhance the future of plastics recycling in the UK. We believe that milk bottles containing recycled plastic will become the widely practiced and innovative method used to improve the environmental footprint of plastic milk bottles,” says James Crick, commercial director at Nampak Plastics.

Davidson says the process has now been recognized by the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has granted the rHDPE process a non-objection status. “Their approval of the rHDPE process for use as liquid food packaging is a milestone for the use of recycled plastics,” he says.