Unilever pioneers solutions that enables black plastic bottles to be recycled

Unilever has pioneering the use of a new detectable black pigment for its HDPE bottles for its leading brands TRESemmé and Lynx, so they can be detected by recycling plant scanners and sorted for recycling.

This means that around a further 2,500 tonnes of plastic bottles could now potentially be sorted and sent for recycling each year.

The new detectable bottles will be phased in during 2019 and will allow Unilever to further close the loop and include the recycled black plastic back in new packaging.

In 2019, TRESemmé and Lynx will both introduce a minimum of 30 per cent recycled material into their packs.

Sebastian Munden, General Manager of Unilever UKI, said: “We’ve been working on a solution for black plastic for some time, and this move to using detectable black plastic in our TRESemmé and Lynx bottles means we will potentially be removing around 3,500 tonnes of plastic from the waste stream.”

“Unilever has committed to ensuring that globally, all of our plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, and to using more recycled plastic content in our packaging.”

“For the UK and Ireland we want to significantly accelerate this and we’re proud our innovation will help us towards achieving our aim, as well as making a significant contribution towards the UK Plastics Pact targets. We’d like to thank our industry partners for their part in working with is to make this possible.”