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What’s your approach for sustainable packaging?
We are committed to making our packaging as sustainable as possible. We try to do four things:
Obviously, we also try to make sure that it does the job it's supposed to - if doing one of the above resulted in increased waste of the product inside (either through damage in transport, or reduction in shelf-life) it would not be good for sustainability - the environmental impact of packaging is normally much less than that of the product itself. To make sure we are always improving our performance, our sustainability and packaging teams set priority improvement projects by assessing all our packaging against our four goals. Any new piece of packaging is also assessed against these criteria, and this assessment is an important consideration in its design.
How do you choose your packaging materials and format?
We choose the packaging that works best from a sustainability perspective (using our four aims as a guide for assessment) and which will also work best for our products and for our customers. For our bottle that has meant using recycled material and trying to get it as light as we can. For the cartons and kids wedges we have been working on using Forest Stewardship Council certified paper (making sure the paper comes from sustainably managed forests), and checking regularly to know where in the UK you can recycle the cartons, and passing this information on to our customers.
What's the difference between recycled and recyclable?
Many materials are now recyclable i.e. they have the potential to be collected and made into new things. For example paper can be made into more paper. Plastic can be made into more plastic. If something contains recycled material, this refers to what they were made out of in the first place, i.e. it contains either some material, or is made entirely out of material, that already used to be something else.
Are your one litre cartons and kids' wedges really recyclable?
Despite most people thinking otherwise, our cartons are fully recyclable. The issue is, that unfortunately not all UK councils currently recycle them, in the same way that most councils didn't take plastic bottles 5 years ago. However, this situation is definitely improving. Over 85% of all councils in the UK now provide some form of carton recycling facilities. Most facilities are recycling banks (in supermarket car-parks or specific waste sites), but over 20% of councils will collect them from households. To find out whether you can recycle beverage cartons in your area, visit www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk and use the map to see if your council currently has a collection scheme.
Why do councils seem to have difficulty recycling carton?
Our drinks cartons are made from paper with a very thin layer of plastic both on the inside and the outside to make the paper waterproof. To recycle the cartons you need to separate the paper from the plastic which requires a few additional steps to the normal paper recycling process. There are very few recycling mills in the UK that have installed these additional steps (mostly because with the current value of recycled paper, it costs more to recycle it than they can sell it for Ð so please buy some more stuff from recycled paper to help drive this market). Up until June 2006, lots of the UK's carton recycling happened at a paper mill in Fife. Unfortunately this mill was closed. In response to this, Tetra Pak provided an initial £300,000 National Recycling Fund, and along with industry partners in ACE UK, they have invested a further £1.5m to support local authorities in setting up recycling and collection facilities. They are now offering a cost neutral recycling bank solution to all local authorities that are not yet collecting cartons. We know that this isn't the perfect answer, but it's all moving in the right direction.
So how are cartons recycled?
The process for recycling liquid cartons is:
1) Baled cartons are dropped into a pulper, similar to a giant domestic food mixer,
Why not switch all your packaging to cartons?
When we choose our packaging we are considering a whole lot of stuff - consumer preference for look and feel, cost for packaging, shelf life of the product, method of filling the packaging with our smoothies, ease of transport etc. And of course what is the most sustainable option - and sustainability needs to think about not only carbon but also broader environmental and social issues as well. Cartons have a really low carbon footprint, but require virgin paper, and some virgin plastics to coat the paper. So there are sustainability impacts associated with forestry activities and plastics. Our plastic packaging uses waste materials and is easily recyclable, but has a higher carbon footprint. We try to make sure we get the right balance for all our packaging, and to make sure that for each packaging format that we use, we make it as sustainable as possible. We are working with our suppliers and specialist organizations like WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) to ensure that we use the best possible sustainable packaging, and we continue to challenge the industry to develop better materials. If we find a better packaging format than what we currently use, that makes sense for us, for our consumers, and for the environment then we will certainly give it a go.
Why don't you use reusable glass bottles?
We do remember the good old days of the milk bottle - and fresh cream on top of the almost still frothing milk. Whilst the reusable glass milk bottles look like the right answer environmentally there are actually a lot of issues for us to consider. Milk bottles are heavy, and take up lots of room in a vehicle as they cannot be flattened, so moving milk bottles around either when empty or full takes up lots of vehicle space and uses lots of fuel creating lots of carbon emissions. There are also significant amounts of energy needed to wash them, and then distribute them back to all the bottling sites for the companies that are using them. Glass also requires a lot of energy to create in the first place and again when it is recycled due to the heat needed to melt it down. Cartons are much lighter, use less material to hold the same amount of product, and use less energy to make in the first place. So whilst they are only used once, unless the glass bottle collection and washing scheme is incredibly efficient, environmental assessments have actually shown cartons to be more efficient. All of the paper used in our cartons and kids wedges comes from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Our assessments have shown that for now the best packaging solution for us is to stick with the cartons rather than glass. We can reassure you that we continue to assess this situation, and should there be a more sustainable answer we will do everything we can to implement it within our business.
Are all your cartons from certified sustainable materials (like FSC)?
We are delighted to say that from May 2009 all the paper in our kids wedge cartons is 100% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and that from January 2011 all our big cartons are 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. The 'gold' standard in this area in our view is FSC. It is globally recognised and those in the know (like Greenpeace and WWF) tell us it is the best.
How do you get the recycled plastic for the bottles?
The old fashioned way. People at home have an old PET bottle that they have finished with, they put it in the recycling bin, the council comes to collect it, and a plastics company collects it to take it away and make it into new bottles.
Why are the bottles a bit of a funny colour?
When you are using recycled material it is hard to get a consistent colour of your plastic. This is because the plastic used to be all sorts of different things and lots of different colours - so to get it back to being completely clear is very tricky. We have worked really hard to incorporate sorting equipment so that we use the best available plastic, but there is still a blue-grey tint to the packaging. Since we introduced our 100% recycled plastic bottle in 2007 we have noticed that the colour of the plastic has got quite a bit worse and our smoothies are starting to look a very funny colour. This is why we have taken the decision to reduce our 100% recycled plastic bottle to a 35% recycled plastic bottle for the moment. There is more information on this decision on this page:
Where do you source your recycled PET for the bottles?
We cannot tell you exactly who our supplier is for commercial confidence reasons, but we can tell you that the raw material is from a European company that uses household collection waste from their region. Some really useful organisations that you can contact for more information about sourcing and using rPET are:
We've been working directly with our bottle supplier over the years, to find a recycled raw material source to supply them a high enough grade material to suit their processing needs (pellet type and I.V. spec). They will continue to work with us to optimize the material performance so that we can try to increase the recycled content from 35% once more.
What about health and safety of the bottles?
The bottles are perfectly safe. We have EU Directives and legislation that stipulate the processes that can be used and the safety parameters within which any recycle material in contact with food has to perform. This legislation is to ensure that there is no migration of active chemicals through the plastic over the duration of the product life. The use of recycled plastics in contact with foodstuffs in Europe is subject to European Commission Directive 2002/72/EC of 6 August 2002 although some countries have their own guidelines as well e.g. France. We commissioned PIRA to carry out independent testing to assess the performance of the selected material in our bottle, and also sought legal advice from a law firm who are experts in food legislation to confirm we were legal in all the countries in which we do business.
Are there problems with using recycled plastic?
Black specs are common in rPET which have not been selected to a high enough grade. The more selective the grade, the more expensive the material. The grades are based on the colour and quality of the plastic selected for that particular batch. Discoloration is an issue. With the highest grade of clear PET there will always be a yellowing of the plastic from the re-processing. With the next grade down, there are usually a lot of tinted bottles in the selection many of which are blue from the water bottle industry. The colour can therefore be blue, grey or green. Our 100% recycled plastic bottles have developed quite a pronounced tint which changes the colour of our product, so for now we are moving to a 35% rPET bottle until we can address the issues we are seeing.
How many times can PET be recycled?
Plastic does lose some of its original quality through recycling. This is caused by specks of dirt, contamination and the fact that the original molecular make-up can change. Studies have shown that you can recycle PET up to 10 times for use in a food-grade product (closed loop), such as our bottles, without needing to use any virgin material. After this, you can either use the recycled plastic and add in some virgin material, or the PET can be recycled for different products, like fleecy jackets, outdoor furniture, or carpets. WRAP tell us that based on the 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.
Has the recycled content of your smoothie bottles changed? If so, what to and why?
In January 2011 we are reducing the recycled content of our little smoothie bottles from 100% to 35%. We want our packaging to be sustainable, but we also want our smoothies to look their best, and these days in our 100% recycled bottle they do not. 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. We're pretty disappointed considering we've spent the last 10 years trying to use as much recycled plastic (rPET) as possible, something we cracked in 2007 with our 100% rPET bottle. But we have found that the quality of the recycled plastic has been getting steadily worse over the last couple of years. We knew from the beginning that it had a slight blue-grey colour and we were prepared to accept this, but the colour has got a lot worse. There are many reasons why; however, it is mainly due to declining quality in the raw materials and inadequate colour standards for rPET. So whilst we can still make the bottles, the colour of them means that our cream coloured smoothies (like pineapples, bananas and coconuts) look grey, and our orange ones (mangoes and passion fruits) look green and so on. So in January 2011 we're reducing the recycled content to 35%. Of course, we're disappointed about this and are determined to increase the recycled content again. We are already working with our suppliers to try and develop new, clearer grades of recycled plastic. We're also active members of a brand 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*. *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).
Why aren't your veg pots made out of recycled material? And are they recyclable?
Our veg pots are made from a special type of plastic so that they can go in the microwave (it's called polypropylene or PP for short). At the moment only a few councils recycle PP but more and more councils are starting to recycle this sort of plastic very soon. Our consumers can check if their council does at Recycle Now. We know not being able to recycle our pots isn't great, so we're working on a better long term solution. As well as trying to get more places to recycle our pots, we're also looking to make them out of recycled plastic. There aren't many businesses asking for PP in a recycled form right now, so there is a lot of work to be done on the recycling technology itself and making sure the recycled plastic will be safe for storing food. We're talking to the government and a few other groups who are doing trials in this area. It's complex, and will take some time, but our engineering friends are onto it. In the meantime, we're trying to reduce the amount of plastic used in the pots, and investigating a few other options as well.
Can I recycle Squeezies?
Our kids squeezies are quite complex when it comes to the packaging. The recycled cardboard container is fully recyclable. The individual squeezie tubes are not yet recyclable so we are still looking for a better solution - we looked at a bio-degradeable option but it just wasn't good enough to protect the fruit inside. Again, if you are into this technical packaging stuff, and know of a material that might be better, please let us know by writing to hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk.
Does Innocent use any PLA packaging?
We trialled the use of PLA (polylactic acid) for our yoghurt breakfast thickie in 2007 - we liked the material because it was made entirely from a renewable resource, and could be composted at end of life. Following on from our trial, we found that PLA isn't quite the right material for us at this point in time. Whilst the bottle is made from a renewable resource, it does not use any waste materials. There are also concerns about the use of food crops to produce plastics and fuels - in that they can take land that is needed for food crops, and push up the prices of food, so it is really important to make sure that we use what would have otherwise been waste materials where we can, and to check sourcing carefully to ensure the crops are grown responsibly. Finally composting is not yet a mainstream end of life option here in the UK, with only a small number of households having any sort of collection of food waste. We have also received feedback from plastics recyclers that PLA bottles can add costs into their recycling operations and in some cases prevent recycling of conventional plastics. We have opted for the use of recycled plastic in our smoothie bottles. They use material that would have otherwise gone to landfill, and the bottle can itself be recycled again, with the majority of UK households having a plastics recycling collection. |
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