Earlier this summer, the U.K.’s Food and Farming Minister, Lord Rooker, called for the dairy industry to become more sustainable, targeting 50% reduction of plastics used in milk packaging as a key goal for 2020. The milk market has a diversity as varied and wide as Europe, and includes these examples:
• Suffolk’s Marybelle dairy began in late 2008 to sell its semi-skimmed milk in ASDA stores located in eastern England in the new GreenBottles from GreenBottle Ltd. (www.greenbottle.com). Greenbottle replaces conventional HDPE milk bottles with bottles molded from recycled office paper and low-density plastic liners. ASDA’s Chris Brown says, “Milk is one of our highest-selling products, and as such, we have a responsibility to develop alternative packaging making it easier for our customers to go green and to help them recycle at home. The Green Bottle is robust, practical and fit for [this] purpose.” A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for GreenBottle completed by PIRA Intl. found that the carbon footprint of GreenBottle was 48% lower than the HDPE milk bottle.
