They contacted DW Reusables, formerly DS Smith Injection Moulded Products, for the design and production of a new crate.
Berglandmilch wants to prevent garbage with reusable bottles. The largest domestic milk processing company started offering milk in a one-liter returnable bottle and contacted DW Reusables to design a reusable crate for the transport of the bottles.
A beverage crate is purposely designed to be a part of the circular economy; beverage crates are durable and ensure a full 10-year warranty under rigorous manipulation procedures. When the crates finally reach their useful end-of-life they are reground and turned into new crates. This process can be repeated endlessly, decoupling packaging from raw material consumption.
Furthermore, beverage crates are a prime example of a ‘first to last mile’ secondary packaging solution, meaning the packaging that is used at the production lines, is also the packaging that the end-consumer takes home, and brings back to the store for reuse.
Rudi Raskin, vice president sales at DW Reusables said, “In the past few years many recycling initiatives were launched. However, the waste hierarchy goes reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order. Our beverage crates can be used for decades, reducing tons of one-way packaging waste. After their useful long lives, they are fully recyclable. For this reason, many of our customers are investing in reusable packaging and are switching back to reusable bottles and crates.”
The environmental protection organization Greenpeace provided Berglandmilch with know-how, noting that reusable bottles are the most environmentally friendly solution to reduce packaging waste for beverages.
Greenpeace said it sees reusables as the only solution to reduce packaging waste in beverages and to combat the plastic crisis.
Josef Braunshofer, managing director of Berglandmilch, said, “As the largest dairy in Austria, we want to become a pioneer in terms of climate protection. Supported by Greenpeace, we are therefore switching to reusable milk bottles this year. As a result, a single returnable bottle replaces eleven disposable glass bottles, so we only need a fraction of the same amount of packaging for the same amount of packaging.”