The UK’s Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP, Banbury; www.wrap.org.uk) is supporting chilled dairy food company Dairy Crest (Esher, Surrey / UK; www.dairycrest.co.uk) in a project to research, design and pilot a new handle-free HDPE milk bottle. Dairy Crest will work with packaging supplier Nampak Plastics (Newport Pagnell / UK; www.eu.plastics.nampak.com) – see Plasteurope.com of 22.01.2008 – to develop the prototype bottles in both one pint (0.57 litre) and two pint (1.14 litre) sizes. If successful, the project will divert an estimated 5,000 t of polymer from the domestic waste stream.

According to Peter Skelton of the WRAP retail team, “Nampak and Dairy Crest aim to achieve a 10% reduction in weight with the new bottle, which will set a new light-weighting standard for the milk industry. The vital next step is perfecting a handle-free design which works for the consumer.” The bottles will be recyclable.

If consumers accept the concept of handle-free bottles, the project team will seek input from other leading dairy processors in the development phase. Results from the design phase of the project will be available in the summer of this year. The entire UK milk industry is estimated to produce between 130,000 t and 150,000 t of plastic packaging waste annually through the sale of 6 bn litres of milk.