Innocent Drinks Co-Packer Cuts More than Half Waste to Landfill

The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE), which counts Tetra Pak as a member, said beverage carton recycling rates had grown to 30% in Europe over the past decade.

27/11/2007 One of Innocent Drinks' co-packers has achieved a 54% reduction in waste going to landfill in six months, according to the smoothie firm.

The co-packer, which Innocent declined to name, has also made a commitment to purchase only renewable energy for its production site and hopes to achieve a 10% reduction in energy use by the end of the year.

Innocent said it was helping all of its suppliers reduce their carbon footprint and had discussed sustainable initiatives with them.

It was one of the first three companies, with Walkers and Boots, to sign up to the Carbon Trust's carbon labelling scheme in March this year, and claims to have decreased its carbon footprint by 15% in six months.

The firm said it would be able to reduce the overall carbon footprint of its bottled drinks by 55% when it switched completely to 100% recycled PET bottles by January 2008.

However, 60% of Innocent's total revenue comes from smoothies packed in one-litre Tetra Pak cartons. These can now be collected by 316, or 73%, of UK local authorities, but are shipped to Sweden for recycling.

The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE), which counts Tetra Pak as a member, said beverage carton recycling rates had grown to 30% in Europe over the past decade.

Around 12 billion cartons, representing 313,000 tonnes, were recycled in Europe in 2006, said ACE.

An Innocent spokeswoman said the firm could not change the recycling infrastructure as such, but was working with Tetra Pak to do more and provided guidance for consumers and local authorities on its website.

"We've made a great start with plastic bottles and we're constantly looking at reducing our carbon footprint across all our packaging and pushing the buttons on each of them as quickly as we can," she said.