A big breakthrough for Malibu’s biggest bottle

At Malibu, we love summers. We know that we must continually improve our packaging, use less resources and minimise our environmental impact. And we want to protect summers for future generations to come.

Our drive to become more sustainable continues with resources focused on investigating and testing options for our opaque PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottles.

“We are looking to make improvements all the time. We want to use less packaging across the board and where we can, have no packaging,” says Billy King, Director Sustainable Development, Malibu. “However, of the packaging that is necessary to protect the product, we look to use as little of the earth’s natural resources as we can to reduce our impact on the environment. One of the ways that we can do that is by using more recycled content and less virgin materials.”

Our consumers in the US prefer bottles that are lighter, safer and bigger [for all the beach and pool parties] and so the bulk of our plastic bottles are sold there, unlike in Europe where glass bottles are the most popular. One of the challenges for Malibu’s instantly recognisable white PET bottle, unlike clear PET bottles, is that are currently not recyclable.

“The difficulty with white PET bottles is that there is no market for them in recycled form – even if the recycling centres are technically able to take the bottles and recycle them. All the focus in the US for recycled PET bottles is with the most used, which are
clear.”

We have had to find a way to maintain that
iconic white bottle look that people
recognise as being truly Malibu by taking
the clear PET bottle and applying a
crystallisable PET shrink sleeve on top so
that we have the white look but a bottle
that is still fully recyclable.

As Malibu is a clear product, its brand proposition would be completely different in a clear PET bottle, so we have needed to find a way to maintain its iconic white design while, at the same time, ensuring recyclability. During 2023, we made significant progress for our popular 1.75-litre PET bottle sold in the US. The new bottle has been confirmed to be 100 per cent recyclable by the American Association of Plastic Recyclers and the US-based How2Recycle scheme.

“We have had to find a way to maintain that iconic white bottle look that people recognise as being truly Malibu by taking the clear PET bottle and applying a crystallisable PET shrink sleeve on top so that we have the white look but a bottle that is still fully recyclable,” adds Billy. “This new look bottle will be on shelves during 2024 for Malibu Original, Black and flavours.”

The initiative is the latest in our drive to reduce plastic waste by recycling and using recycled material. Today, Malibu bottles are made with 30 per cent recycled plastic, which is ahead of the original target set by Pernod Ricard in 2021 to have at least 25 per cent recycled plastic across its packaging by 2025.

Our sustainability plans also include an ongoing partnership with Plastic Bank to support a plastic recycling ecosystem in the Philippines (the world’s third-biggest contributor to ocean plastic) while improving the lives of local communities at the same time.

The vision and concept for Plastic Bank are simple. It recruits local people as collectors to gather plastic waste to be recycled directly from local beaches, riverbanks, neighbourhoods and households. The collectors get paid for the plastic they retrieve, providing them with a much-needed income, while tonnes of plastic are prevented from entering the ocean. The collaboration between Malibu and Plastic Bank in the Philippines is aiming to prevent five million plastic bottles from ending up in the ocean by 2025.