How are plastic milk bottles changing?

Plastic milk bottle manufacturers are responding to calls for 'greener' packaging and beginning to include recycled HDPE into bottles. Known as rHDPE, the first bottles with 10% rHDPE were available in 2007 in Marks & Spencer's organic milk range.

Market trials have also been successfully conducted with 30% recycled content and, as more material becomes available, the percentage of rHDPE in milk bottles is set to rise.

This is becoming possible as more local authorities are providing kerbside collections for plastics and recycling rates are increasing. It is also the result of trials involving leading UK plastic milk bottle manufacturer Nampak, and other major organisations such as Dairy Crest, Marks & Spencer, Nextek and WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) who have worked together to develop a way of producing HDPE milk bottles using recycled content that meet all the relevant laws and regulations about safety and food packaging.