Recycled plastic bottles

Our 250ml smoothie bottle is quite special. It's fully recyclable and it also contains recycled plastic. We've been pioneering the use of food grade recycled plastic ever since 2003 when we first introduced 25% post consumer recycled content (rPET) to our bottles. We then took it all the way to 100% recycled plastic in 2007.

The bad news is that we had to temporarily reduce the content down to 35% in 2011. The quality of our plastic had declined to an unacceptable level: we want our packaging to be sustainable, but we also want our smoothies to look their best. We wanted to inspire other companies to use recycled plastic and demonstrate that it can perform as well as virgin plastic, but we weren't doing that.

Of course, we're disappointed about this and are determined to increase the recycled content again. We're busy working with our suppliers to try and develop new clearer grades of recycled plastic. We're also active members of a new rPET industry discussion forum, co-ordinated by WRAP, to try and find a long term solution not just for innocent but for anyone who wants to use recycled plastics*.



It's a bit like recycled paper - when it was first introduced it was brown, furry and you wouldn't even dream of putting it in a printer. Now you can't tell it apart from virgin paper. Recycled plastic for food packaging is still pretty new in the UK, and it needs to go on a similar journey.

*WRAP tell us that based on current and foreseeable recycling technology, recycling rates and demand, an rPET level in the order of 35% for all PET packaging would be a very positive and hugely beneficial industry target to aim for. This would preserve the integrity of the recycling stream and allow the loop to remain closed (in other words allow us to keep making more drinks bottles out of it).

.