Water bottles to turn cloudy in drive to cut plastic waste

Co-op says it will wear greyish hue as a ‘badge of honour’ as it switches to 50pc recycled material

WATER bottles will turn cloudier and “greyish” amid a drive to use more recycled plastic, a major supermarket has announced.

The Co-op is to switch all of its ownbrand still, sparkling and flavoured water to 50pc recycled plastic bottles, in a bid to cut waste. The new bottles will have a cloudier and greyer appearance than those that do not contain recycled plastic, the supermarket said.

Jo Whitfield, the chief executive of Co-op Food, said: “Our customers expect us to respond to this challenge and help them make more ethical choices, and we’re dedicated to doing just that.

“Making these changes will also create new uses for recycled materials, which in turn gives our customers greater confidence in recycling.”

The new bottles, which are 100 per cent recyclable and sourced in the UK, will be rolled out to all stores this year, and will save up to 350 tons of plastic annually, a Co-op spokesman said.

The supermarket also plans to rid its aisles of black and dark-coloured plastic by 2020, on the grounds that it is harder for sorting machines to detect and it contaminates the recycling stream, reducing the usefulness and value of the recovered material.

Iain Ferguson, the Co-operative Group’s environment manager, said: “Suppliers are working hard to make the bottle clearer – and they already have. In the meantime, our bottles will wear this greyish colour, which I see as a badge of honour – we are part of the market for recycled products and are proud of that.”

The oceans contain more than 150million tons of plastic, while more than 100,000 sea mammals and a million birds die from eating or becoming tangled in plastic waste annually.

The Co-op’s announcement follows news that Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, is considering a range of proposals to tackle plastic waste, including introducing charges on bottles that could then be reclaimed at “reverse vending machines”, in return for a small payment.

Dozens of countries already have versions of a deposit return scheme system, with costs ranging from around 6p in Australia to 22p in Germany.

The German scheme is credited with helping the country achieve a bottle recycling rate of more than 90 per cent since its introduction 15 years ago.

In Britain, by comparison, the figure is closer to 40 per cent. Mr Gove said: “We can be in no doubt that plastic is wreaking havoc on our marine environment – killing dolphins, choking turtles and degrading our most precious habitats. It is absolutely vital we act now to tackle this threat and curb the millions of plastic bottles a day that go unrecycled.”

The Co-op said it fully supported government plans announced this week for a deposit return scheme to cut plastic bottle waste.

However Sian Sutherland, one of the co-founders of A Plastic Planet, an environmental campaign group, told The Daily Telegraph: “No matter how many times a plastic bottle is reused or recycled, it will almost always end up in the environment sooner or later. Instead, we have to turn off the plastic tap.

“Where is the logic in packaging something as fleeting as water in something as indestructible as plastic?”

‘Our customers expect us to help them make more ethical choices, and we’re dedicated to doing just that’