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 recycled content down to 35% in 2011. Read all about why and what we’re doing about it here.

Light as a carton

We put our cartons on a pretty strict diet during 2010. Our kids' wedges lost a whopping 15% of their weight, the big cartons a little less, but they have promised more weight loss in 2011. Altogether the weight reduction will save around 75 tonnes of card each year. What this means is around 1500 more trees, lots more places for bears to hide and a fair bit less carbon in the atmosphere (like 185 tonnes less).

We have also introduced a nifty new way of containing our kids wedge multi-packs; you may have seen them in certain stores... Rather than the big, bulky box we've got a slender wrap around sleeve which does the same job but uses only half the card. Our creative team has a bit less space to draw on, but they've come to terms with that now.

The other thing we did last year was to change the caps on our big cartons, saving about 20 tonnes of plastic a year. Previously, under each cap, there was a little plastic seal that you removed before pouring. Since our smoothies need a good shake, removing the seal sometimes resulted in stuff getting splashed about a bit. The new caps provide a secure seal without the need for the additional seal - simple, but effective.

Our cartons hug trees

We are delighted to say that all our 750ml cartons are made from 100% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified card and we're busily working on our brand new, big 1250ml cartons. In May 2009 all the paper in our kids wedge cartons moved over to 100% FSC, so they're officially bear friendly too.

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. If you want to read more about the great work of the FSC click here

Shrink wrapped glory

For ages we have been transporting our smoothies to the shops in 100% recycled cardboard boxes. In 2009 we changed to a small recycled card tray with shrink wrap plastic around it – and believe it or not this is better from a sustainability perspective.

When it was first suggested, the idea of moving to plastic from cardboard box didn’t seem quite right. However, based on our calculations the new format has 40% less carbon emissions overall – a total saving of 270 tonnes per year. The plastic film is recycled by the shops when then put the bottles on shelf, and the 100% recycled card goes in the normal paper recycling. You can see how the two different formats stack up against our four sustainable packaging criteria below (this is the kind of assessment we do on all new packaging):

There are still things we can improve – for example, when recycled PE film becomes available we will definitely try and use it – but this is a little while off though.