Packs and Closures

Two of the UK's biggest drinks brands have highlighted problems with the nation's ability to supply recyclate packaging materials as they announced moves to 100% recycled PET bottles.

Innocent Drinks has claimed a world first by moving four of its fruit Smoothies to 100% recycled PET.

And Ribena owner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will move the brand's ready-to-drink bottles to 100% recycled PET in October. The bottle cap and sleeve will not be made from recycled materials but will be compatible with recycling facilities.

The four Innocent flavours are in new 250ml bottles, which are 20% lighter then their predecessors. It expects to switch the rest of its Smoothie products to the material by January 2008.

The recycled PET for both brands is, however, being supplied from overseas for now.

Innocent sustainability manager Jessica Sansom refused to name the supplier of the recycled plastic, which is based in the UK, but is initially sourcing the material from Europe.

She said the firm had found it difficult to source high-quality fully recycled PET from the UK because, until recently, there had not been much demand for the material.

"But demand is now building slowly and we'll keep buying it," she said. "We're using the same equipment and same production process as before."

Meanwhile, although the Ribena bottles are being produced at Amcor's Gresford plant in north Wales, the converter is sourcing the 100% recycled PET from one of its other factories in France, according to Caroline Storey, GSK's strategic projects manager for nutritional healthcare.

GSK has also teamed up with recycling charity Recoup to trial "reverse vending" machines in four shopping centres across England, as part of its plans to increase recycling.

Storey said two machines had already been installed, in Milton Keynes and Peterborough, and talks were ongoing across other locations.

"Plastics recycling is improving a lot at kerbsides at home," said Storey. "But 70% of our drinks are bought on the go and people are not going to take these bottles home to recycle them."

The recycling units on trial look like standard vending machines and consumers can 'post' empty bottles through a slot. The machine reads bottles' barcodes and sorts them by material type.

The new Ribena bottle design will feature a "flash" that will tell consumers the packs can be recycled.

Ribena marketing director Anne MacCaig said the fact that almost 13 million plastic bottles are sent to landfill every day showed the "mismatch" between the recycling infrastructure and consumers' aspiration to recycle.

"It is vital to set in place a more reliable supply of recycled materials so that we can build on our current achievement and other food and drink manufacturers can follow our lead," she said.

Innocent's next step will be to source 100% recycled plastic caps for its bottles, according to Samson.

The paper it uses for labels already has a recycled content of 25%, with the remaining 75% sourced from FSC-certified forests, and the firm is trying to improve this.