Waitrose bid to cut waste with milk “ecopacks”

Today sees the launch of a trial scheme by Waitrose in which milk will be sold in plastic pouches, for customers to use with re-usable milk jugs.

From today, the store's customers will be able to buy the re-usable polycarbonate jugs for £1.99 with purchases of a brand of “ethical” Welsh organic milk called Calon Wen, which will be made available in strong polyethene film “ecopaks” to be sold for 91p each.

The ecopaks mean 75% less plastic being used compared to the equivalent HDPE plastic milk bottle, the supermarket chain said.

Waitrose suggested its scheme, which is inspired by a similar system in Canada, would help shoppers “who are already struggling with bi-weekly rubbish collections”. The company said that because milk is a frequent purchase for householders, milk packaging “consequently makes up a high percentage of waste in the UK”.

Trial

The system is being launched in 21 branches of Waitrose initially – including 17 London branches, three branches in Wales and Waitrose Bath – with plans to extend the scheme nationwide. The supermarket claimed that if the new bags replaced plastic milk bottles entirely, the system would bring savings of 100,000 tonnes of plastic a year.

Dairy buyer Jane Hills said: “A litre polybottle can hold 75 empty eco paks so we believe our customers will appreciate help with their personal environmental and recycling endeavours. We are always looking for ways to reduce packaging and the milk jug is a perfectly simple replacement for the existing polybottles.”

A spokeswoman for Waitrose insisted to letsrecycle.com that both the new milk bags and the re-usable milk jugs were recyclable.

As part of the continuing supermarket “green wars”, last month saw Asda revealing its attempt to find an alternative to plastic milk bottles (see letsrecycle.com), at a time when domestic milk bottle recycling technology is now being developed (see letsrecycle.com story).