Innocent Smoothies abandoned its virgin packaging at the beginning of this year. The ambitious soft drinks company has been sourcing 100 percent recycled PET bottles since January from a supplier in continental Europe. Eventually, it could become one of the first customers for a new cluster of bottle-to-bottle plants about to spring up in the UK, the first of which quietly started operating at the beginning of April, its managers say. Creenstar WES Group, a company based at Wilton on Tyneside, states that it is not only the first bottle-to-bottle grade plastic recycler in this country, but also the first company in the world to produce HDPE food grade pellets from waste milk bottles. It has produced "a few hundred" tonnes from the new ￡4m, 10000 tonnes per annum capacity plant and is gradually building up its production over the next few weeks, according to company executive James Donaldson. Dairy companies will buy the bottles, which will be produced by Nampak, an international packaging organisation.
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