Environment

We’re taking Action

Making Recycled Plastic the Norm

We make sure that our bottles are made with as much recycled plastic as we can get our hands on. We never use bottles made from less than 50% recycled plastic across our entire range, for the moment this excludes the cap and label but we’re working on that. We haven’t stopped there, our ‘hero’ range is made entirely from other bottles (excluding cap and label) and can be fully recycled too (again…and again…and again!)

Our Plastic
isn’t Rubbish

Everything about the Princes Gate bottles are recyclable, including the label and cap. So together we can help give our bottles many more lives and cut waste.

We’re all about
Zero waste to Landfill

Rest assured that everything that can be recycled at our HQ is recycled. We’ve been a Zero Waste to Landfill site for over 10 years now and it’s something the whole team takes great pride in and responsibility for.

OUR COMMITMENT

Here at Princes Gate, the entire team cares about where we live, about our wider environmental impact and the quality of our water. We’re an imaginative lot and if there’s something that we can do to lessen our impact, we’ll give it a go! Whether that’s creating a carpark out of recycled plastic bottles or rewilding the land around our factory, we’re committed to making all the changes we can, big or small, to lessen our impact and protect the environment.

We are all facing many challenges right now, but climate change is the biggest of them all. As a result, and rightly so, we are all demanding more from the companies we buy from and we realise businesses like ours have a responsibility to do the right thing. We are known for our no nonsense, open approach and certainly don’t claim to be perfect here at Princes Gate. But one thing we will be is entirely honest about what we do. We’ve always tried to share our progress in terms of becoming more self-sufficient and using renewable energy, but going forward we know we need to do even more. We commit to share with you what we've done, what we do and what we are planning to do better! We’ll continue to take a holistic approach to reducing our environmental impact whilst also investing in our ‘friends’ in the hope that together we can make positive change.

Things you can do too

We have great ambitions to do all we can to be as green as the space we occupy, but if we’re to really tackle climate change then we need to do this together. Here’s a little handy guide on how you can help…

Use less water

Take shorter showers, capture rainwater and install water saving devices.

Reuse & Repair

Turn those empty jars into drinking glasses and bottles into vases..

Recycle

A little more recycling and a little less rubbish.

Use less energy

Unplug devices when not in use, switch to an energy provider that uses renewable energy and replace light bulbs with energy-efficient LEDs.

Net Zero by 2050

We’ve long been on a mission to minimise our carbon footprint, reducing our bottle weights and introducing rPET, but now we have our sights set on nothing less but Net Zero. Or more specifically, a 20% reduction of our carbon footprint by 2025, 50% by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050 in line with the rest of the Nestlé group. We will be sharing our plans as we go over on our blog.

Powered by nature

We have renewable electricity to thank for running our factory. With our very own wind turbine and Solar PV we’re pretty self sufficient and any top ups always come from a renewable energy provider.

Committed to working with you

We will always listen closely to our customers and embrace chances to improve our service and our environmental impact. So, if you feel you have an idea that we maybe haven’t thought of, then we’d love to hear from you!

Get in touch

Practicing what we preach

Currently our bottles are made from at least 51% recycled plastic, excluding the cap and label. They are also 100% recyclable, this means that, if we work closely with our customers we can create a completely closed loop in terms of recycling. Every decision we’ve made about our packaging has been closely considered. Each bottle is carefully designed to use as little plastic as possible and is transported to the factory as a tiny preform and blown on-site. rPET plastic is completely recyclable which means that if it is recycled properly then the material from our bottles never has to be wasted or found in landfill. One of the reasons why we use rPET (recycled plastic) above Tetra or aluminium cans to package our water is because these have a much higher carbon footprint than rPET.

Closing the loop

We really believe in the circular economy and we’re fully supportive of a DRS (Deposit Return Scheme). But what does this mean exactly? We aim to be fully circular in the way we design and manage our packaging and we believe that DRS is one of the best ways to increase the number of people recycling their bottles. A DRS system will charge anyone buying a drink a small deposit for the bottle, which will be returned when they recycle it. It basically, very cleverly, makes sure that our empty drink containers end up in the right places.

Alliance for Water Stewardship in 2025

Pembrokeshire’s tasty, refreshing water is everything to us, so of course we want to actively protect our local sources, but it’s also very important that we collaborate with others to protect and encourage good practice and sustainable water use worldwide. Find out more about water stewardship here. This will be a big focus for us in the coming months, follow our progress over on our blog.

Rewilding OUR Princes Gate HQ

Now, we’re not claiming to be experts on rewilding, but that hasn’t stopped us transforming 5 hectares of fields around the Princes Gate factory into a thriving, natural landscape full of wildlife, including ducks and bees. Pete has worked with us for a long time and saw the potential in the land around us. He got some advice from the specialists, including The Royal Botanical Gardens in Carmarthen and set about creating fields of wild flowers and vegetation, a pond with a duck house, bee hives and log mounds to provide many safe havens for the local wildlife, and for the team when they want to take some time out with a coffee (ahem… or a water!).