Happy about Naked Juice's packaging

The Coon Rapids recycling coordinator was incensed that Naked Juice, which promotes itself as all-natural, healthy, good for you, etc., comes in a #7 (mixed resins) plastic bottle, which is unrecyclable. So she said I should write to Naked, which I did, after visiting their web site.

Dear Naked Juice,

I'm smiling right now because I was poised to send you a letter asking you why your juice bottles are made with #7 plastic, which is generally not recyclable. I go to your website to find contact info, and lo and behold there's the reNEWabottle. I'm very very pleased to see you're taking such an innovative step to try to close the loop on packaging your product. You should market your move extensively so that lots of people take notice, and hopefully other beverage companies will follow your lead! Thanks and good luck! In fact I'm now going to start buying Naked juice!

Sincerely,
Nancy Lo
Minneapolis

Here's the reply:
Nancy:

We're glad you're so excited about the Naked Juice reNEWabottle. We're pretty stoked about it ourselves. Mother Nature gives us all our best fruits, so we always do our best to keep her happy and healthy.

Even with our current bottles, they're probably more recyclable than you think. To make a long story short, Naked Juice 15.2 oz bottles are technically #7, but they can be recycled as #2 plastics. If you'd like the whole story in more detail, here are the facts:

1) Naked Juice 15.2 oz containers are made almost entirely of HDPE (#2) plastics.
2) The only other plastic we use is a thin layer of nylon which keeps oxygen out of our juice, and thus keeps them fresher.
3) Because we use two different plastics, our bottles are technically #7 plastic. (#7 just means mixed plastics.)
4) However, since the nylon doesn't interfere with the recycling of the plastic, you can recycle the bottles as though they were 100% #2 plastic. We put the #2 or the words "HDPE Compatible" on the bottle to highlight this fact to our consumers.

I hope this information is helpful, Nancy. Thanks for your interest in our brand. We hope you can continue to enjoy our products and our new bottles.

Dan
Naked Juice Consumer Relations

Here's details on their new reNEWabottle, which is made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles, which then can be recycled again to make more new bottles. Naked is the first nationally distributed brand to make their bottles entirely from 100% post-consumer plastic, and once they transition their whole line to the new bottles, they'll save 8.1 million pounds of virgin plastic per year and reduced their oil consumption by 57,000 barrels annually!