Under the plans, Tesco will remove coloured plastic and change blue, red and green caps of over 425 million bottles of milk with a clear alternative to make bottles easier for customers to recycle at home
Tesco to change coloured caps of its own-brand milk bottles. (Credit: Tescoplc.com)
British supermarket chain Tesco has announced its plans to replace coloured caps from the packaging of its own-brand milk bottles with new clear caps to improve recycling.
The change, which will be implemented to over 425 million bottles of milk, is intended to make bottles easier for customers to recycle at home.
Under the plans, Tesco will remove coloured plastic and change blue, red and green milk caps with a clear alternative.
The supermarket will encourage the consumers to squash or crush empty bottles while replacing the original lid before recycling them to prevent them from being misplaced or thrown away.
The change will be implemented to milk bottles that are four pints, two pints, and one pint in all Tesco locations over the coming weeks.
According to the supermarket chain, without the coloured caps, the coloured block labels surrounding the main bottle will help to differentiate between several milk varieties, including whole, semi-skimmed, and skimmed.
Due to the initiative, an additional 3,900 tonnes of recovered plastic can be used annually to create new bottles, Tesco said. Additionally, the process can be repeated each time a consumer recycles it.
Currently, coloured plastic is handled separately from clear packaging.
Tesco Dairy category director James Waddy 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.”
The company follows its 4Rs strategy of removing plastic where it can reduce, where it can’t, reuse more and recycle what’s left for plastic and packaging.
Earlier this month, a trial of fresh mince pillow packs, which use 70% less plastic and are totally recyclable at in-store soft plastic collection sites, was announced by the supermarket chain.