The trial, which involved the production of 60,000 recycled content milk bottles for commercial sale, is the culmination of a three-year project and builds on early research by Linwood Foods. Initiated and funded by WRAP to develop a recycling process capable of producing food grade polythene from milk bottles, the project was delivered by an international team including Nampak Plastics, Dairy Crest, the Fraunhofer Institute, Sorema, Erema and Nextek. The team also co-operated closely with the Food Standards Agency.
The world first commercial demonstration of ‘closed loop’ recycling for milk bottles takes post-consumer scrap bottles from both kerbside and bring schemes in the UK and recycles them back into new milk bottles. With some 130,000 tonnes of plastic milk bottles in use, this technology could significantly improve the future of plastics recycling in the UK.
Jennie Price, Chief Executive of WRAP, says: “This is a major breakthrough for UK recycling. Incorporating recycled plastic into everyday products like milk bottles is vital if we are to gain the maximum environmental benefit from recycling, and is great news for the growing numbers of people who are recycling their plastic bottles.”
Once collected, the post-consumer bottles are sorted by infra-red detectors and by hand to separate out natural HDPE bottles. The sorted bottles are flaked and washed in a 2% caustic solution at 93°C to remove all surface dirt, paper labels and adhesive. The flakes are then dried and colour sorted before the dried flakes are put through a ‘super-clean’ recycling process. The new food grade polymer is then added to virgin HDPE at 30% and made back into polythene milk bottles.
Following extensive testing to ensure compliance with food packaging legislation, the project team worked with Marks & Spencer and produced and filled 60,000 4pt plastic milk bottles containing 30% recycled content which went on sale in M&S stores in December last year as a trial. No consumer reaction on packaging quality was received, demonstrating that the recycled content bottles were indistinguishable from their virgin counterparts.
Paul Davidson, Plastics Technology Manager for WRAP, says: “This large scale trial proves beyond doubt that milk bottles containing recycled material from this process are every bit as good as 100% virgin bottles. They meet all the necessary criteria, both in terms of safety, production, filling and transportation, and, critically, consumer acceptance. We are now looking forward to seeing milk bottles containing recycled plastic becoming a common occurrence on UK supermarket shelves.”
Nicole Lander, Communications Director, Dairy Crest says: “Dairy Crest Limited is delighted to see that the hard work put in by ourselves and the project partners has delivered this world leading technology. Dairy Crest Limited is committed to taking a leading position in the Dairy industry in order to minimise packaging waste and will continue to work with retailers to ensure these changes are in line with consumer expectations and needs.”
James Crick, Commercial Director, Nampak says: “This exciting initiative is totally in line with our policy of being at the forefront of introducing environmental initiatives and improvements into the UK milk packaging industry.
“The aim of this project is to dramatically increase the recycling rate of plastic bottles in the UK. By working with our project partners, we are making a major contribution to boost UK plastics recycling rates.”
WRAP is now negotiating contracts to provide financial support to potential recyclers to get the process commercially established in the UK.