By Elaine Burridge

US packaging group Berry Global (Evansville, Indiana; www.berryglobal.com) has announced a partnership with UK grocery company Abel & Cole (London; www.abelandcole.co.uk) to supply reusable polypropylene bottles for its Club Zero Refillable Milk service.

Sales of the bottles are reported to have seen a 20% week-on-week uplift since their launch last October, with a current return rate of 64%, which Abel & Cole aims to increase to at least 75%. 

The packaging group optimised the bottles to support Abel & Cole’s eight-stage cleaning process, reverse-engineering the design to fit the LDPE cap of the grocery firm’s own bottles, and removing the handle to reduce bacteria-trap points and allowing for easy drainage. Berry said the PP bottles can be refilled up to 16 times before being recycled and offer a lightweight alternative to glass.  

Related: Berry expands film recycling at three European sites

Research conducted by Abel & Cole suggests that reusing its refillable milk bottles just four times reduces the carbon footprint of their single-use plastic (SUP) bottles by half compared with heavier glass bottles, which would take over 15 returns to reach similar emissions savings. The concept also saves 450,000 SUP milk bottles from landfill or incineration each year, equivalent to 23 t of plastics, according to the research.