Abel & Cole release refillable plastic milk bottles to cut traditional glass reuse emissions

18 Oct 2023 --- Abel & Cole has launched a refillable milk bottle made from PP to ensure multiple refills and recyclability in a “UK-first” plastic bottle innovation.

When consumers and manufacturers discuss refillable milk packaging, the first solution that comes to mind is a glass bottle, says the company. Glass bottles are easy to sterilize and relatively cheap. However, they are also brittle and heavy. These drawbacks caused the company to search elsewhere for material solutions. 

The refillable bottle can save 450,000 single-use plastic milk bottles from being used, equating to 23 metric of plastic. This switch can save 60 metric tons of carbon yearly compared to a glass alternative.

The company vowed not to use unnecessary plastic in 1988. Therefore, the company had to confront the “enemy” that is plastic. Through trials, plastic was the best fit for the company’s goals, and it created Club Zero Refillable Milk.

“We found that glass’s transport and processing emissions were significantly higher [than plastic] because it is a denser material which leads to heavier bottles. This went against our initial assumptions and what many of our competitors were doing, and we had to weigh up whether we were doing this simply to replace plastic or to have an impact on our scope three emissions,” Hugo Lynch, sustainability lead at Abel & Cole, tells Packaging Insights.

Best results with plastic
As milk supply chains extended in the 20th century, the industry moved to single-use plastic packaging that cost significantly (approximately six times) less and did not need to be collected back, which better suited the growing supermarket model.

Abel & Cole were “surprised” to use plastic for its refillable milk bottle.This switch led to resource waste in the form of plastic pollution. It also required dairies to install specialized filling equipment suitable for plastic bottles but, in many cases, can’t be retrofitted to work with glass packaging except at a “huge cost” that would need to be passed on to customers. Abel & Cole says its customers shouldn’t have to pay the price for “putting the planet first.”

The company explains that it took three years, seven teams of experts and three failed experiments to create the bottle. Using plastic as the milk bottle solution was challenging but had the best results, it says.

“It’s important to think practically about these types of changes to supply chain. In our case, we have a dairy that was already set up to use plastic bottles where we wanted to introduce a refill model,” says Lynch. 

“The cost of changing material wasn’t just in the bottles themselves, but also in the retrofit of filling and transportation equipment to ensure that it was done safely and with minimal breakages – costs which would have limited the ability of our customers to take part and would actually increase our emissions in the short term until we could guarantee a high rate of return.”

“This doesn’t mean that we don’t support glass packaging however, our view is that the most [environmentally] sustainable route to a refill system is to try to leverage the facilities and technology you already have, whether that’s glass or plastic. We are not afraid to ask ourselves difficult questions and go against the grain to find the most [environmentally] sustainable solution.”

Using the Club Zero Refillable Milk bottle four times can cut the carbon footprint of the company’s single-use milk bottles in half compared to heavier glass bottles, which would take over 15 returns to reach similar emissions savings.

If most of the dairy industry switched to the refillable PP bottle, it would save the industry 300,000 metric tons of carbon annually. This number was calculated if 90% of the 7 billion liters (according to Dairy UK) of milk distributed annually in the UK moved from single-use plastic to a reusable plastic bottle that is reused four times as per Abel & Cole’s packaging model.

Cleaning and creating
The online grocer explains that plastic bottles can be hard to wash and must be adequately dried for reuse. The company worked with MV Technical Solutions on a bespoke washer as a solution. Returned bottles are cleaned and sanitized in an eight-stage washing process.

“Ensuring that the bottles are easy to clean and fill was hugely important. We had to remove the handle from the single-use bottles to ensure that we could do that, and we also designed our bottles to have the same neck diameter as the existing ones so that they could fit onto the machinery at the dairy,” explains Lynch.

This method was tested with an expert technical team and the Environmental Health Organisation to ensure the highest possible quality of cleaning.

After the testing, Abel & Cole commissioned a bespoke PP bottle designed for reuse and completed chemical tests to ensure the containers were ready to be refilled and reused.

“Choosing the right material is also key, and we worked closely with regulators, including environmental health, to ensure that we were compliant with all safety regulations,” adds Lynch.

However, regarding recycling Lynch says: “Recycling is definitely part of an environmentally friendly solution, but, from what I’ve seen, it’s over relied on and we don’t achieve the recycling rates we need in the UK. Our approach to packaging promise to our customers is refuse, reuse and then recycle. Focussing on reuse maximizes the value of packaging before it goes into recycling which is usually into a lower-grade product, especially in the food industry.”

The eco-focused grocer calls on big supermarkets and the dairy industry to contact them. “We have years of learning to share, and experts are excited to tell you about it. Imagine the impact we could have together,” the company concludes.

“There are a lot of obstacles to a full industry switch, but we want to be a part of making that happen,” concludes Lynch.

By Sabine Waldeck