Lakeland Dairies launches clear milk bottle tops to boost recyclability

12 Sep 2023 --- Lakeland Dairies has rolled out new clear caps for its 2-liter and 3-liter milk cartons. The lids will be included on the company’s own brand, Champion, and other retailers’ brands.

The traditional red or blue colored carton tops cannot be easily recycled into food-grade packaging. Therefore, replacing colored milk caps with clear caps makes it easier to recycle and helps reduce color contamination with high-density PE.

“Across all our 2-liter and 3-liter cartons produced for retailers as well as our iconic and market-leading Champion brand, we are playing a real leadership role in reducing unrecyclable plastic from the supply chain,” says Tommy O’Donaghue, head of Consumer Foods with Lakeland Dairies.

“As the blue, red and green milk caps need to be processed separately from clear packaging, the change allows Lakeland Dairies to improve the quality of recovered material from household waste and enables the new cap to be recycled back into milk bottles.”

Switching caps
The new caps are the latest in a line of commitments made by Lakeland Dairies to reduce the environmental impact of retail milk packaging.

Lakeland Dairies switches its colored caps to clear so they can be recycled more efficiently.“Lakeland Dairies has a long tradition of innovation and serving the needs of our loyal customers while doing so in harmony with nature. We take our responsibility of sustainability producing safe, healthy and nutritious milk extremely seriously,” asserts O’Donaghue.

In 2017, Lakeland Dairies reduced the weight of the two-liter bottles by 10%. In 2020, Lakeland Dairies reduced the weight of the three-liter bottles by 4%. This was followed by introducing 20% recycled material into the bottles in 2021.

The bottles, caps and sleeves are now 100% recyclable and are widely recycled in Ireland and the UK.

In 2020, Lakeland Dairies became the “first-to-market” with a paper straw for its market-leading range of VIVA-flavored milk. The 100% recyclable straw has saved an equivalent of 20 metric tons of plastic since 2020.

“As always, we still have the same great look and taste as before with the freshest of milk from our world-class dairy farmers, but now we are even more [environmentally] sustainable,” concludes O’Donaghue.

Similarly, Tesco has ditched its colored milk caps on the roughly 245 million milk bottles it sells yearly. The removal of colors, traditionally used to delineate fat levels, was made to make the caps easier to recycle and help the supermarket improve its environmental sustainability record.

Edited by Sabine Waldeck