Danone UK To Recycle As Many Water Bottles As It Sells

Danone, the French producer of bottled waters Evian and Volvic, is responding to environmental critics and falling sales with a plan to increase the quantity of bottles it recycles, as well as upping recycled content of the bottles, reports The Times.

Danone’s bottles are currently made with 25% recycled plastic, and the company wants to increase that to 50% or more within a few years. The company has also pledged to reclaim and recycle a bottle for every bottle sold in the UK.

Danone  plans to buy up to 12,000 tons of plastic a year from British recyclers in an effort to increase the use of recycled plastic from 10,000 to 40,000 tons by 2012.

This could help the ailing recycling market in Britain (not to mention the highly criticized bottled water industry), where the price of recycled plastic bottles has dropped by nearly half. But critics are wary of the company’s plan to ship the bottles back to France for reprocessing. They say using British facilities would be less expensive, and more environmentally friendly.