Recycled plastic bottles

Our 250ml smoothie bottle is quite special. It 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.

But now for some bad news. We are going to reduce the percentage of recycled plastic. Pretty disappointing when you've spent the last 10 years trying to up it. But we've 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.

We want our packaging to be sustainable, but we also want our smoothies to look their best, and right now they don't. We want to inspire other companies to use recycled plastic and demonstrate that it can perform as well as virgin plastic, but we aren't.

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're 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*.

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).

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 from the end of 2010 all our big cartons will be made from 100% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified card. From May 2009 all the paper in our kids wedge cartons moved over to 100% FSC too, so now all of our carton family is officially bear friendly.

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.