Dairy cooperative turns to clear bottle caps in sustainability bid
27th April 2023
Farmer-owned dairy cooperative Dale Farm is the first enterprise in Northern Ireland to switch to clear bottle caps on all of its own-label milk in a bid to make Dale Farm milk packaging more sustainable.
Ed Wright, head of Sustainability at Dale Farm, with the new sustainable bottle cap packaging.
While coloured bottle caps cannot be easily recycled, the move to clear caps means that bottles and caps can now be recycled together into food-grade packaging. The switch is estimated to return nearly 60 million caps – 72 tonnes – to such packaging annually.
According to Ed Wright, head of Sustainability at Dale Farm, the move is the latest in a series of measures aimed at enhancing sustainability across the business.
“At Dale Farm we want to lead the dairy sector on sustainability,” he said. “We constantly assess our processes to see where we can improve, and step by step we are improving packaging sustainability across our product range.
“We’re proud to be the first in Northern Ireland to replace all coloured caps with clear caps on our Dale Farm branded milk bottles as well as those we produce for our retail partners,” he added.
Although a small change, it is hoped the new caps will positively impact the cooperative’s environmental footprint in the long term.
The new clear cap bottles will be launched on shelves in early May 2023. Labels will continue to be colour-coded to allow shoppers to distinguish between different types of milk.
