News

Nampak Plastics has launched a website to show consumers the environmental credentials of HDPE milk bottles and the importance of recycling.

Its www.bottle2bottle.com site, which officially went live this week, explains how HDPE and plastic bottles are made, and the benefits of closed loop bottle recycling.

Nampak Plastics business development director James Crick said the firm hoped the site would attract people searching the internet for more information on milk bottles or recycling.

Nampak plans to work with customers and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) to raise awareness of the website, and Crick said he also hoped it could become an educational resource through the school curriculum.

"Many schools are talking about recycling so we will work with Wrap to find ways to do it," he said.

To get the message across to children, Nampak has developed a plastic elephant called Sam, and it also hopes the Sam logo will appear on milk bottles with recycled content from next year.

In 2006, 37% of milk bottles were recycled in the UK. However, kerbside collection is only available for 54% of UK homes.

"We need to get it from 54% to 90%," said Crick.

A Nampak survey of 1,000 people in 2007 found that 93% thought recycling of milk bottles was important.

Crick said the sustainability of oil-based plastics depended on improvements in recycling.

Local authorities must build more materials recycling facilities, and create capacity to separate plastics and recycle post-consumer waste, he added.

The launch comes as Nampak continues to focus on raising the recycled content of HDPE milk bottles.

It is already producing bottles with 10% recycled content for Marks & Spencer, and aims to hit 30% during 2009.

The firm is establishing its own closed-loop recycling system with a 13,000-tonne capacity HDPE reprocessing plant due to open in the north-east of England in 2009.

It is also working with Dairy Crest in a project that is examining the possibility of removing the handles from one- and two-pint HDPE bottles, with the aim of achieving a 10% reduction in weight. Visit www.bottle2bottle.com .