Successful trial of bottles made with 30% recycled HDPE

23-Mar-07

A commercial trial of plastic milk bottles made with 30% recycled HDPE has been successful and marks a major turning point and breakthrough in recycling. The trial involving Marks & Spencer was carried out with 60,000 four pint bottles, containing 30% recycled content, and sold in December 2006. No consumer reaction on packaging quality was received during the pilot project. To get the recycled HDPE, post-consumer bottles from kerbside and bring schemes were sorted manuually and infra red detectors, before being flaked, washed, dried, colour sorted, cleaned again. This was then added to virgin HDPE to make the milk bottles. The project took three years to develop and was based on early research by Linwood Foods and funded and initiated by WRAP.