More environmentally friendly plastic milk bottles

The first successful commercial trial of plastic milk bottles containing recycled HDPE, using world first technology, is announced by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme).

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.