Aldi Ireland today announced that it is removing more than 43 tonnes of plastic from its 3ltr milk bottle range as part of its commitment to reducing the amount of plastic packaging by 50% by 2025.
The new bottle design retains the same strength and durability as before but uses less unnecessary plastic. The shape of the bottle has also been altered, meaning Aldi can now increase the capacity of bottles per milk trolley. As such, this allows more bottles to be transported per delivery, therefore reducing carbon emissions as less deliveries are needed.
Aldi has been working with Strathroy Dairy for the past 18 months to redesign the bottle, which has over 20% less plastic than the original.
Aldi is initially rolling out the new 100% recyclable bottles across 72 of its stores in its Clonbawn 3ltr milk range, with the aim of introducing the new bottles across all 142 Irish stores overtime. Customers will find the new bottles in participating stores now.
This move follows a recent announcement by Aldi that it moved to fully renewable and plant-based packaging across its entire Clonbawn 1ltr milk carton range, a change that affected more than 13.7 million cartons annually. As a result of this change, Aldi will now save more than 113 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) annually.
In addition to these changes across its milk ranges, Aldi will also be moving to 100% recyclable packaging across its bottled cream range from December 2020. This will see Aldi removing the PVC sleeves that currently surround the cream bottles, and instead printing the label directly onto the bottles. This will remove almost 5 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic from stores annually, equating to more than 2.4 million bottle sleeves.
Commenting, John Curtin, Aldi Group Buying Director, said: “At Aldi, we understand that customers are looking for more sustainable ways to shop at our stores. Reducing the amount of plastic used in our 3ltr milk bottles means there is less plastic on our shelves, and less plastic going into our customers’ household waste. This change is another step towards reducing plastic by 50% by 2025.”
Aldi has recently introduced a series of changes to meet its plastic reduction targets, including moving to 100% recyclable packaging across its falafel and veggie burger ranges, introducing compostable and recyclable packaging in its fresh herb ranges, replacing black plastic trays with cardboard trays in its Specially Selected tomato range and introducing three new environmentally friendly bag options in stores, saving the use of 12.5 million plastic bags annually.
