Dale Farm is leading the way in Northern Ireland for sustainable milk packaging by making the switch to clear bottle caps on all Dale Farm branded and own-label milk.

The move will make milk packaging more recyclable. Coloured milk bottle caps cannot be easily recycled, the switch to clear caps means that bottles and caps can now be recycled together into food-grade packaging.

It is estimated that the switch will return nearly 60 million caps – 72 tonnes – to food grade packaging each year. Ed Wright, Head of Sustainability at Dale Farm, says the move is the latest in a series of measures to improve sustainability across the business.

“At Dale Farm we want to lead the dairy sector on sustainability,” Ed said. “We constantly assess our processes to see where we can improve, and step by step we are improving packaging sustainability across our product range.

“We’re proud to be the first in Northern Ireland to replace all coloured caps with clear caps on our Dale Farm branded milk bottles as well as those we produce for our retail partners. It’s a small change that in the long term will have a positive impact on the environment.”

Shoppers will still be able to easily distinguish between different types of milk as the same colour coded labels will remain on all milk bottles. New clear cap bottles will be on shelves from early May 2023.