Dairy sector seeks increased rHDPE in milk bottles

The plastic recycling sector needs to up its game in a bid to meet dairy industry demand for increased levels of recycled content in milk bottles, trade body Dairy UK has claimed.

The organisation which represents 85% of the UK milk production industry praised efforts in the sector to increase levels of recycled HDPE (rHDPE) in plastic milk bottles in recent years but has set out an ambition for a recycling revolution in the sector.

The comments came as agriculture minister Jim Paice outlined the achievements made under the Dairy Roadmap at an event to mark the expansion of the Roadmap at the House of Commons earlier this week (May 9).

The Roadmap which is an offshoot of the Milk Roadmap project launched in 2008 indicates that the dairy sector has achieved a goal of including a minimum 10% recycled plastic in milk bottles to date.

The next goal for the sector is to achieve 30% recycled content by 2015, ahead of the long-term ambition of 50% by 2020. And, while Dairy UK praised efforts by recycling and packaging firms to date, it stated that there were concerns from the dairy sector about the recycling sectors ability to provide necessary material.

Jim Begg, Dairy UK director general, said: As the industrys environmental performance continues to improve, recycled plastic becomes an ever scarcer resource. Just as we are upping our game, we need the recycling industry to up theirs and provide us with the materials that will enable us to achieve our ambitious next set of targets.

We need more and more recycled plastic and what we need to see is a recycling revolution with a major expansion of the operations of existing recycling companies and the creation of new firms which will deliver the materials we will need.

Caution

However, concerns have been raised about the ability to increase the recycled content in milk bottles due to concerns over contamination.

A report published by the Waste & Resources Action Programme in January 2011 indicated that increased concentrations of rHDPE led to a green hue in the plastic flake.

This hue is regarded as unattractive by customers and therefore rejected by retailers (see letsrecycle.com story).

Research commissioned by packaging firm Nampak in October 2010 said that 72% of HDPE milk bottles placed on the UK market in 2009 had been collected for recycling (see letsrecycle.com story).