We will make all our 1.8bn water bottles recyclable, promises Evian

EVIAN has pledged to make all of the 1.8billion bottles it produces each year from recycled plastic by 2025. At present it is around 25 per cent.

The mineral water company, part of French food giant Danone, has become the latest big brand to heed efforts by the Daily Mail and others including naturalist David Attenborough to curb the use of polluting plastic.

Supermarket Iceland, coffee chain Costa and fast- food giant McDonald’s have all announced similar decisions in the last month.

Evian, the world’s third-largest bottled water company, said it would redesign its packaging, accelerate recycling and recover plastic waste from nature. Global brand director Patricia Oliva said: ‘We want to adopt a circular model where 100 per cent of our plastic bottles will become bottles again.

‘This will enable plastic to evolve from potential waste to become a valuable resource.’

In the process which Evian currently uses to recycle plastic, clear ‘PET’ plastic as used in bottles cannot be recycled more than three times because the quality suffers.

Evian said new technology means it will be able to recycle the plastic again and again, retaining the same quality.

Theresa May this month unveiled the Government’s 25-year plan for the environment which seeks to eradicate avoidable plastic waste in Britain by 2042.

This follows a ban on plastic microbeads, common in body scrubs and shower gels.

Eight million tonnes of plastic – bottles, packaging and other waste – enter the ocean every year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

McDonald’s said on Tuesday it would switch to environmentally friendly packaging materials and offer recycling in all its restaurants. It aims to get all its packaging from renewable, recycled or certified sources by 2025.