What is the best type of container for olive oil?

Why We Don’t Use Plastic Bottles: A Better Way to Produce and Package Olive Oil

In recent years, plastic has quietly crept back into the olive oil industry - not just in packaging, but across the entire supply chain. From harvest containers to bulk transport and retail bottles, plastic is often chosen for one reason alone: of all available materials it has by far the very cheapest cost at acquisition.  

At Opus Oléa, we’ve made a very deliberate decision to go in the opposite direction.

This isn’t a trend-led choice. It’s rooted in quality, integrity, and a long-term view of environmental responsibility.

After all, the real cost of plastic use only comes after consumption, in the form of its health impact on us and its heavy environmental burden.

Plastic in Olive Oil Production: The Hidden Problem

Plastic comes in many forms, and not all of them are immediately visible to the consumer.  In the modern olive oil supply chain, plastic is commonly used for:

• Harvest crates and sacks
• Bulk transport containers (especially IBC tanks of 1,000 liters and other sizes)
• Retail packaging:  PET bottles (polyethylene terephthalate) and increasingly LDPE squeeze bottles (low density polyethylene) and plastic pouches (marketed as "polymer" pouches, but essentially made of plastic).

Each of these choices has implications - for both the oil and the environment.

Harvest Matters: Why We Use Hessian, Not Plastic

The journey of great olive oil begins at harvest.  Many producers use plastic crates or polypropylene sacks because they are:

• cheap
• lightweight
• easy to stack

But plastic doesn’t breathe and it's not biodegradable. That matters.

Fresh olives are delicate. When confined in plastic, especially in the warm conditions of the olive producing countries, they can begin to sweat and degrade before pressing - affecting flavour and quality.

We use re-usable traditional hessian sacks made of natural jute fibers instead.  They are:

• more expensive
• heavier
• less convenient

But they allow airflow, helping preserve the integrity of the fruit from tree to mill.  Most importantly, they don't end up as microplastics in our oil, our water supply and throughout our food chain.

It seems like a small decision, but it has a very meaningful impact on quality.

Bulk Transport: IBC Tanks vs Stainless Steel

Once oil is produced, much of it is transported and stored in IBC tanks - large, cube-shaped plastic containers holding up to 1,000 litres.  They are everywhere in the industry.

They are also, in our view, deeply flawed.  Plastic is:

• permeable at a microscopic level
• susceptible to temperature fluctuations
• capable of interacting with the oil

Instead, we use stainless steel tanks for both storage

and for transport.

Why?

Because stainless steel is:

• inert (it does not react with the oil)
• stable as a material across temperatures
• the gold standard for preserving freshness and flavour

This is standard practice in high-quality wine production. It should be no different for high-quality olive oil.

The Rise of Squeeze Bottles - and Why We Reject Them

There’s a growing trend toward plastic squeeze bottles in olive oil.  They’re marketed as trendy and convenient.  But they come at a cost.  Most of these bottles are made from LDPE (low-density polyethylene) - a soft plastic that is:

• more difficult to recycle
• more prone to degradation
• less protective of the product inside

From a product perspective:

• olive oil is sensitive to oxygen, light, and heat
• plastic packaging offers much weaker protection than glass

From an environmental perspective:

• LDPE recycling rates are extremely low
• much of it ends up as waste rather than being reused

Put simply: squeeze bottles prioritise convenience over quality and sustainability.

They go against everything we stand for.

Glass: Simple, Proven, and Responsible

We use glass bottles.

Not because it’s fashionable - but because it works.  Glass is:

• inert - it does not interact with the oil or release chemicals and microparticles into the environment
• impermeable
• highly protective when properly tinted

And crucially:

• fully recyclable

Unlike plastic, which is often downcycled or discarded, glass can be recycled indefinitely without loss of quality.

The Recycling Myth

A common argument in favour of plastic is:  “It’s recyclable.”

In theory, yes.  In reality, the picture is very different - particularly in the UK.

Only a small percentage of plastic waste is actually recycled (only about 17%) (Source: Greenpeace 2025 - tap link). Another roughly 34% of plastic waste in the UK is "declared for recycling" or "recovered", which means:

• landfilled (11%)
• incinerated ie. burned 
• or exported to countries like Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia (14% and growing) 

Recycling systems struggle with:

• mixed plastics and polymers
• food contamination
• low-value materials like LDPE

The incineration of plastics in particular is grossly incompatible with targets for CO2 emissions in the UK.

Glass, by contrast, has a far higher recycling rate and a more established infrastructure.  The UK currently recycles 75% of its glass waste and this is expected to reach 90% in the next 3 years. Even that last 10%, if left unrecycled, does not contaminate the food chain and our drinking water with microplastics, which are now found in every single organ and all the tissues of people living in the UK and does not release dangerous chemicals into our atmosphere.

Other materials such as ceramics and tins (both those with inside coating and without) have their own important shortcomings in protecting the product and the environment.

Are We Going Backwards?

In the 1980s and 1990s, the better quality olive oil started moving away from cheap, clear PET bottles - the kind still seen in supermarkets today - to the much better standard of glass.

That shift happened for good reasons:

• PET offered poor protection
• it degraded quality
• it cheapened perception
• it represented a heavy burden from an environmental perspective
• it is completely incompatible with regenerative and sustainable practices

Today, the rise of LDPE squeeze bottles has taken us full circle back to where we were with PET in the 1970s and 1980s plus a step down, as LDPE is worse than PET - those are very big steps backwards.

At Opus Oléa we are not interested in repeating that cycle.

Even further down the chain, when we send our glass bottles to every nook and cranny of the country, we use 100% carton and paper packaging.  No plastic membranes, bubble wrap, styrofoam, plastic pouches, bubbles or bags here.  It may cost more, but it aligns with our values of truly lived and not just spoken sustainability.

A Philosophy, Not a Feature

Our approach to materials isn’t a marketing angle. It’s a philosophy.

• We choose hessian over plastic at harvest
• Stainless steel over IBC tanks in transport
• Glass over plastic at the point of sale

Each decision is:

• more expensive
• less convenient
• harder to scale

But each one protects:

• the quality of the oil
• the integrity of the process
• our land and the environment our oil comes from
• the integrity of our sustainable and regenerative practices

The Bigger Picture

Olive oil has only found wider appeal amongst consumers in the UK in the last 25-30 years or so.  It was originally sold in very small quantities in pharmacies for the treatment of various ailments, rather than as a food product.  Over time people who moved to Great Britain from Southern Europe started bringing their olive oil with them to recreate the dishes of their countries of provenance.  Some specialist shops with an interest in the various Mediterranean cuisines started popping up and eventually the large supermarket chains in the UK started placing olive oil on their shelves, not that long ago.

Today the UK consumer keeps getting more informed about the value of good quality olive oil and its differences with lesser qualities.  When you choose an olive oil, you’re not just choosing a flavour.

You’re choosing a system and a practice:

• how it was grown
• how it was handled
• how it was produced
• how it was transported
• how it was packaged
• how it was distributed

Plastic has its place in the modern world.

But for something as natural, delicate, and biologically significant as olive oil - we believe there is a better way.

And we’ve chosen to follow it, every step of the journey.