Milk goes green as eco-friendly cardboard bottles hit the shops

The revolutionary milk bottle is made out of recycled paper

A new environmentally-friendly milk bottle is set to go on sale in supermarkets throughout the UK.



The revolutionary GreenBottle was invented by Martin Myerscough from Suffolk after he saw the impact plastic milk bottles were having on his local landfill.

'The statistics for plastic bottles are just horrible,' he said.

'I thought that we should be able to do something better and greener.'

Over 18 months, his team based in Framlingham worked on their design.



The outer shell is made from recycled paper that can be recycled again or thrown away to decompose. It has a thin plastic liner, which takes up less than 0.5 per cent of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill.

GreenBottle was first piloted in the Lowestoft branch of ASDA in May last year and sold at the same price as the milk in conventional containers.



It will now be a permanent fixture on the shelves and Mr King said there were plans to offer the product across ASDA's East Anglia stores within a few months.



Chris Brown, head of ethical and sustainable sourcing at ASDA, said they had been impressed by the concept model.



'The GreenBottle is robust, practical and fit for purpose, meaning there is no danger of spilled milk at breakfast time,' he added.

An out shell it made from paper. A loose inner bag is inserted into a paper spout. The bag is foulded and placed into the outer shell. The bottle is glued and filled.

An independent lifecycle analysis of the GreenBottle found it had a carbon footprint 48 per cent lower than that of a standard milk bottle.

The bottle is filled locally with milk supplied by Suffolk's Marybelle dairy.



James Strachan, director of Marybelle Dairy, said: 'The GreenBottle system is the single biggest leap forward in dairy manufacturing technology in years.



'We are thrilled to be able to offer our customers the same high quality milk, in a more sustainable, high quality bottle.'

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs predicts that by 2020 half of all milk packaging will be made from recycled materials.