Soft drinks brand Britvic has launched what it calls an Ecopack for its Robinson’s squash drinks.
While the company says it has 89% less plastic in the packaging, the product is made up of a combination of paper, aluminium and a “non-renewable” plastic coating. It also has a plastic cap that is made from “renewable plastic”. Britvic said it is made from 89% plant-based materials.
Compared to a single PET bottle, this is much harder to recycle due to the multi-material nature of the packaging and the fact that it is harder to separate the materials. Not all households have collection of multi-material beverage cartons like this.
It will be trialled in Tesco stores across the UK and contains 60 servings per 500ml carton in a super-concentrated form.
This concentrate strength means it contains the same amount of servings as from three single concentrate bottles.
Robinsons innovation lead Fiona Graham said: “As a brand, Robinsons is continuously innovating and is committed to improving the environmental impact we have. Squash is already a sustainable product due to its concentrated format. Making Robinsons available in this new format allows consumers to feel confident in the knowledge that the pack they’ve chosen has more serves, but used less packaging per serve, and can be recycled once finished.
“All packaging types have their own unique benefits and challenges, and we know there is currently no one ‘silver bullet.’ That said, we believe that continuing to innovate with products such as Robinsons Ecopack will bring us one step closer to a solution and provide consumers with a range of options.
“The brand-new Robinsons Ecopack carton will be available via Tesco to begin with, and we are excited to learn what consumers think about the new format.”
