Ribena is to roll out a new ‘lightweight’ 500ml bottle in January which the soft drinks giant claims will save 325 tonnes of plastic per year.
Lucozade Ribena Suntory said it had recently completed a “successful” trial of the new bottle, which weighs just 18g. The low weight was achieved by “redistributing the plastic more effectively and optimising the design”.
Meanwhile LRS would be “moving to ensure” cardboard trays used to deliver bottles of Ribena squash concentrate are made from 100% recycled board, having already begun producing trays for Ribena cartons from 100% recycled paperboard.
LRS said the two moves combined should save 406 tonnes of new board from being produced each year.
The Ribena brand is also calling on shoppers to push their straws back into its cartons once they have finished drinking with a campaign across social media. Doing so makes the straws easier to collect and recycle, it claims.
LRS was “on a mission to be as sustainable a business as possible”, said its director of external affairs and sustainability Michelle Norman. “We are extremely proud that we’ve been reusing 100% recycled plastic in our bottles for a decade and we are committed to continued innovation.”
Indeed, the Ribena brand was this week celebrating the fact it has made bottles from 100% recyclable plastic for 10 years.
LRS recently signed up to charity Wrap’s UK Plastics Pact, agreeing to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single-use plastic from its packaging and ensure 100% of its plastic is recyclable by 2025.
It earlier this year launched a “global innovation challenge”, billed as “a call to all innovators and entrepreneurs to find practical solutions to help the company move beyond plastic”.
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