Tesco has announced that it is switching from coloured to clear caps across bottles of its own-brand milk.
According to the retailer, by removing coloured plastic and changing blue, red and green milk caps to a clear alternative – on around 425 million bottles of milk every year – Tesco noted that it is improving the quality of recovered material from household waste and enabling the cap to be recycled back into milk bottles.
James Waddy, category director for dairy, said, “Ensuring our packaging is as sustainable as possible is really important to us, and customer feedback on our trial of these new clear milk caps has been overwhelmingly positive.
"We will continue to look for ways to improve the packaging of our products, and make it even easier for customers to recycle at home.”
Customers are encouraged to squash or crush empty bottles, replacing the original lid before recycling to ensure it is not lost or discarded, Tesco added.
Processed Separately
Coloured plastic currently needs to be processed separately from clear packaging, and so this simple change means that each year 3,900 extra tonnes of recycled plastic can go back into making new bottles, a process which can be repeated every time a customer recycles it.
The move will be seen in all Tesco stores, and across 4 pint, 2 pint and 1 pint bottles of milk.
Different variants of milk – whole, semi-skimmed and skimmed – will still be clearly identifiable, thanks to coloured block labels around the main bottle.
Removed Plastic
To date, Tesco has removed around 2.2 billion pieces of plastic from its UK business, including:
- 200+ million bags from Tesco.com deliveries
- 100+ million extra lids from products such as wipes, creams, yogurts and desserts
- 33 million pieces of plastic from bakery bread and doughnuts
Read More: Tesco Ireland Trials New Fresh-Meat Packaging
