In July 2025, ALDI SÜD’s MILSANI sour cream cup won the German Packaging Award. What’s new and different is that it contains 30% recycled polystyrene and this saves up to ten tons of new plastic a year. Out of more than 200 global entries, MILSANI’s cup is one of 37 awarded innovations. The product was submitted by ALDI’ssupplier Müller Service GmbH, together with plastic producer INEOS Styrolution, and Optipack GmbH.
The MILSANI sour cream won the award in the “Sustainability: Use of Recyclates” category of the German Packaging Award. The cup is made with 30% recycled polystyrene (PS) sourced from the yellow bin (post-consumer packaging waste) collections. It proves that polystyrene does not need to be downcycled into lower-quality products. Instead, it can be transformed into high-quality, food-safe material, setting new standards for circular packaging while “the CO₂-reducing process is a commendable advancement”, according to the jury.
Pioneering work with polystyrene: advancing a circular economy
Polystyrene was long considered difficult to recycle especially into food-grade material. Our partner INEOS Styrolution has developed an innovative process to recycle PS into high-quality, food-safe packaging material.
For dairy packaging, recycled PS offers multiple advantages: it is food-safe, lightweight, shape-stable, easy to process, and highly versatile. In addition, many PS food cups are already collected via the lightweight packaging stream from households, providing an available material source without extra effort from customers.
Starting in 2025, together with our partners, we are bringing more dairy products in recycled polystyrene packaging to ALDI and HOFER stores in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, and Switzerland—making circular packaging solutions more accessible for our customers.
Introducing recycled PS at the ALDI SOUTH Group marks a major step forward in making circular food packaging fit for the mass market. It shows that the use of recycled content can deliver on both food safety and performance needs. It also reflects the ALDI SOUTH Group’s commitment to increase recycled content in own-brand packaging and supports compliance with the upcoming Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
