Aldi: Supermarket makes major change to milk bottles

Nov 22, 2023

Over the last five years, supermarkets have been doing more to play their part in reducing plastic pollution and food waste. Aldi has been constantly changing and updating the packaging of its products to reduce the use of single-use plastic.

Aldi's latest environmentally-friendly move is changing the packaging of its milk bottles.

The supermarket is trialling clear caps on the bottles, instead of the current coloured ones.

It will therefore scrap the green bottle tops on its British Semi Skimmed Milk product and replace them with the new clear versions.

This is because the clear bottle tops are easier for people to recycle.

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The trial will be introduced later this month across stores in Cheshire, Manchester, and Liverpool.

If the move – which is in partnership with milk supplier Muller – is successful, it will be rolled out to more stores across the country.

According to Aldi, if rolled out to all Muller-supplied stores, an additional 60 tonnes per year of recycled High-Density Polythene (rHDPE) could be turned back into food-grade packaging.

The clear milk bottle tops will be reused to create new milk bottles.

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Richard Gorman, Plastics and Packaging Director at Aldi, said: "We know it's becoming increasingly important to our customers that their everyday products are environmentally-friendly, and we are constantly reviewing ways to become a more sustainable supermarket.

"By trialling clear milk caps we are making our milk bottles easier to recycle, so they can be turned back into new packaging."

This is the latest step in Aldi's to reduce the number of recycled materials in its products.

The supermarket is on track to have 50 percent of its plastic packaging made from recycled materials by 2025.

The new commitment, announced by Aldi last month, will see 2.2 billion pieces of plastic removed from the supermarket's product lines over the next five years, most of which will be single-use. This is equivalent to 74,000 tonnes in weight.

Future plans include replacing plastic wrapping on toilet rolls with a paper alternative.

Double lids will also be removed from cream and yoghurts, and plastic trays on steak lines will continue to be phased out and replaced with cardboard alternatives.

Since launching its updated plastics strategy in 2018, Aldi has removed more than 6,000 tonnes of plastic packaging from products.

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This includes flexible sleeves on multipack tins, expanded polystyrene pizza bases, and fruit and vegetable multipacks.

The new target aims to speed up this progress and will build on Aldi's previous commitment to reduce plastic packaging volumes by 25 percent by 2023.

Giles Hurley, Aldi's Chief Executive for the UK and Ireland, said: "We are stepping up our efforts to reduce the amount of plastic packaging used across our business because it is the right thing to do for a sustainable future.

"We know this issue matters to our customers too and are confident they will support our initiatives to reduce plastic in the coming years."