Here’s a little bit more information about what we use for our packaging and why.  We're far from perfect but we are working hard to get better and better.  For information about how to recycle our packaging check here.

250 ml smoothies

Bottles - we've been working towards making them from 100% recycled materials since we started making drinks, and in early September 2007 we finally reached our target, becoming the first company in the world to launch a bottle made from 100% recycled plastic. The bottles are also fully recyclable, so please pop them into your recycling bin when you¹re done with them.

Caps - made from PE (Polyethylene) which is a basic plastic and is completely recyclable. It is not possible to use recycled plastic in our caps because the caps have to be accurate in size and shape to fit securely, and it's hard to achieve this with recycled material. We are hoping that this will improve over time and our suppliers know we want to be the first to use PCR in our caps.

Labels - made from 25% recycled paper and 75% paper from forests that have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Glues - the adhesive on our label needs to be strong to stay on the bottle in the wet and cold of refrigerators. Some councils ask people to remove the label from the bottle before recycling. From what we understand, nine times out of ten the label gets washed off in the recycling process. We are however looking at other types of adhesive that will allow easier removal of the label, and perhaps mean that the glue is biodegradable. We’ll let you know how we get on.

Inks - are all solvent free. The inks we use in the printing of our booklets and other materials are made from vegetable extracts. This is not yet true of the ink on our bottle labels, but we are working with our label printer to move to vegetable based inks in the near future.

Outers – these are the boxes our smoothies are sent to the shops in.  These are made from 100% post consumer recycled paper.

Our cartons and wedges are made from paperboard sandwiched between two thin layers of polyethylene plastic (to seal in the liquid and protect the carton from external moisture). The paperboard makes up 77% of the carton, and our focus here is to ensure that all the paper comes from forests that have an independent sustainability certification.

Certification ensures that the paper comes from forests that meet high environmental standards, where forest workers are treated fairly, and the forestry company invests in ensuring the forest is there for the long term. Seems like sensible stuff to us, however, like most things it's not simple.

We source our cartons from two different suppliers and the paper they use has a mixture of certifications. They all have funny acronyms like FSC, PEFC and SFI, and there are a number of national schemes too. Each scheme has its own set of standards, but let's face it, different standards are better than no-standards at all.

The 'gold' standard in this area in our view is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and our goal is for all our cartons and wedges to be 100% FSC certified. We like FSC because it is globally recognised and those in the know (like Greenpeace and WWF) tell us it is the best.

We've been busy on this in 2008, and while we are not in a position to announce anything just yet... well, all we can say is check back with us in a month or two.

Oh and while we are on the subject of things we can't quite announce yet (never have been very good at keeping secrets) we've also been busy reducing the amount of paper used in our cartons and wedges, and the final round of testing is all going very well. Ahhh, you have to love progress.

Lastly - the inks are all solvent free, and do not contain any heavy metals, and the distribution boxes for both the cartons and the wedge are made from 100% post consumer recycled paper.

If your council doesn't recycle Tetra Pak cartons, we've also got a letter you can send them to encourage them to start.

If you've got any ideas about how we can improve our packaging then please let us know at hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk.