Cotteswold Dairy's Next Step Towards Sustainability: Clear Caps Pave the Way for a Greener Future

At Cotteswold Dairy, we are dedicated to enhancing our sustainability and continuously exploring ways to minimize our environmental impact. One opportunity for the food packaging industry to reduce its carbon footprint is by incorporating recycled materials. We are actively promoting the use of recycled content in our poly bottles and have identified our next initiative to support the adoption of recycled plastic within the industry.

What is our next step in reducing our impact?

Starting in December 2023, we will gradually replace our green poly bottle caps with clear caps that can be fully recycled into food-grade packaging. While coloured plastic caps are still recyclable, the pigments used in them prevent their reuse in the food industry. Given the global shortage of recycled plastic material for food-grade packaging, it is crucial for the food industry to support sustainability efforts.

How will the switch to clear caps help?

By transitioning from green to clear caps, we will achieve the following benefits:

- 70% of our poly caps can be recycled back into the food industry.

- Approximately 30,000,000 caps will be recycled into the food industry annually.

- We will recycle around 58 tonnes of plastic into the food industry each year.

We understand that coloured caps are commonly used as indicators of milk types. To address this, we have developed a new label range featuring clear and distinct colours to easily identify skimmed, semi-skimmed, and whole milk.

We are still using red and blue caps to differentiate between Whole and Skimmed milk, but we may review this in the future as the industry evolves.

We take pride in supporting ongoing environmental initiatives while ensuring easy identification and maintaining excellent quality