Dairies claim to be on-target to build bottles in recyclate

Despite a flurry of recriminations over the summer, UK dairies appear to be back on track to incorporate a 10% proportion of food-grade recyclate into their fresh milk polybottles during 2010.

This is despite significant challenges in ensuring that the recycled high density polyethylene (rHDPE) consistently meets supply chain technical and safety requirements.

Converter Nampak plastics, which has taken a lead in using rHDPE, is already supplying Dairy Crest and Marks & Spencer with bottles containing 10% recyclate. Last summer, other dairies undertook to meet the same target "by 2010 or sooner"

Nampak business development director James Crick said that the firm and its partners undertook "rigorous customer trials" with the likes of Pira International and Leatherhead Food Research. "Tests included taste, migration, bottle rigidity and colour," he said.

While Dairy Crest is close to completing the conversion of its final site, Severnside, to rHDPE capacity, other dairies have chosen to interpret the 2010 deadline as the end of next year. But a spokesman for Dairy Crest acknowledges that the company had a headstart over others, thanks to its development work with the Waste & Resources Action Programme and the association Dairy UK.

"This is such a technical challenge, each dairy has to do its own due diligence," he said. "You can't rush the process."

By July this year, Dairy Crest was the only UK dairy that said it was on-course to meet the 2010 targets. This drew accusations from one MP that dairies were not "fulfilling their obligations", and broader criticisms from plastics reprocessor Closed Loop London that brand owners were still too often just paying lip service to sustainability goals.

But since then, Closed Loop md Chris Dow has emphasised the need to communicate the results of all that testing, particularly to retailers. "The issue is more about trying to understand what it is that will give people reassurance," he said. "When we last met, every single one of the dairies was positive about proceeding."