Campaign for supermarkets to pay more for recycled milk bottles

Whilst consumers enjoy the benefits of the slump in oil prices, those who make their living from recycling plastics are having a rough time of it. Low oil prices mean that virgin polymers are cheaper than recycled material.

This campaign, driven by Friends of the Earth, is encouraging people to lobby the big supermarkets to agree to paying a little bit - 0.1p in fact - more for recycled milk bottles to help to keep the Closed Loop facility in London operating. Given the mercenary way the supermarkets use milk as a loss leader, and the disdain they have hitherto shown for the dairy industry, we’ll be surprised if they acquiesce to this plea but we wish the campaign well.

Read about the campaign at MRW.

We would hope that someone at the supermarkets will be alive to the PR disaster that hits them when all these milk bottles start finding their way back into landfill because there is no market for recycling them. Importing oil to make plastic bottles and then paying to landfill old ones doesn’t make any sense and if the difference really is one tenth of a penny per bottle then it really isn’t in the nation’s interests to reverse a sensible trend towards recycled product..