From cow to bag

Sainsbury's to sell milk in recyclable plastic ‘pouches’

In its latest drive to cut back on waste, Sainsbury’s will shortly start selling milk in recyclable plastic ‘pouches’. The initiative, in partnership with milk supplier Dairy Crest, will only work if customers prove more green-minded than they were in 2001, when the supermarket chain’s first attempt to wean us onto pouches was abandoned due to lack of consumer interest. The pouch is designed to reduce packaging by 75% – and if all the plastic milk bottles in Britain were replaced in this way, says Sainsbury’s, it would keep 100,000 tonnes of plastic waste out of landfill every year.

“It’s less clear cut than it might seem,” though, for Alice Roberts, policy consultant at the Local Government Association. “This would reduce waste to landfill when compared to standard plastic milk cartons, but the pouch material may not get recycled at the moment because it is much lower value – too low in fact.” An LGA report in May shows that up to 38% of supermarket food packaging cannot be recycled – showing only a two percentage point improvement on the previous year. – Tom Bamford

24 June 2008

Tom Bamford