10/05/2011image expired

The UK dairy industry is ready to take its environmental performance to the next level, according to a Dairy UK announcement made this week.

The Dairy Roadmap, launched on Monday (9^th May) by Defra Minister Jim Paice, demonstrates that dairy processors have met all their environmental targets to date, including a minimum 10% recycled plastic in milk bottles. However, Dairy UK claims that a “recycling revolution‟ in the supply of recycled plastic to the dairy industry would be essential if the industry is to meet the targets it has set itself for the future.

In 2010, more than 70% of milk bottles purchased in the UK were recovered for recycling and more than 12,000 tonnes of plastic was recycled into fresh bottles. This helped to reduce emissions from packaging in the sector by 27,000 tonnes in 2010 alone. The next target the industry has set itself is to achieve a minimum 30% recycled plastic in milk bottles.

Jim Begg, Dairy UK Director General explained the problem. “As the industry’s environmental performance continues to improve, recycled plastic becomes an ever scarcer resource. Just as we are upping our game, we need the recycling industry to up theirs and provide us with the materials that will enable us to achieve our ambitious next set of targets. We need more and more recycled plastic and what we need to see is a recycling revolution with a major expansion of the operations of existing recycling companies and the creation of new firms which will deliver the materials we will need.”