Closed Loop opens new M&S route for recycling

The Times
June 8, 2009
Marks & Spencer, which wants to use more recycled content, is to sell food packaged with plastic recycled in Britain
Sarah Butler

For the first time, Marks & Spencer will this week sell food packaged with plastic recycled in Britain.
The salad boxes are the final step in a project to create a “closed loop” for plastic food packaging in the UK, in which used bottles are recycled into new food containers.
Britain uses an estimated 2.5 million tonnes of plastic packaging every year and is required by the European Union to recycle at least 22.5 per cent of it. Finding local uses for tonnes of recycled plastic waste is the key factor in cutting down the amount of plastic that goes into landfill.
M&S is working with Closed Loop Recycling, based in Dagenham, Essex, which says that its recycling facility is the first in the world to take milk bottles and clear drinks bottles and turn them back into plastic that is clean and safe enough to package food.

The plant will also be supplying food-grade recycled plastic to Coca-Cola and Solo Cup Europe, which makes cups for companies including Starbucks and Pret A Manger.
Closed Loop plans to open a second plant in Deeside this year, which will boost the amount of plastic bottles recycled in Britain by 50,000 tonnes a year.
Chris Dow, the managing director, said: “We are really keen to make recycling as easy as possible and also prove that consumers’ hard work recycling ends up in tangible products they can buy in store.”
The number of bottles collected by local authorities rose by 70 per cent last year, giving processing businesses increased security of supply and making recycled plastic a more attractive material for manufacturers.
M&S’s Food to Go salad boxes will be produced using up to 40 per cent recycled PET from old plastic bottles and more than 50 per cent recycled content in total.
The retailer hopes to increase the percentage of recycled content and extend the use of British recycled PET to other products in its food range as soon as more can be produced. It has also reduced the total amount of packaging used on its food by 12 per cent in the past two years.
The government-backed Waste & Resources Action Programme said that if the 13 billion plastic bottles used every year in Britain were recycled, it would save a total of about 785,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, the same as taking 250,000 cars off the road.