By September 2019, Sainsbury’s will be the first supermarket in the UK to remove all plastic packaging from the vegetables and loose fruit. Bakery items will also be sold in paper bags instead.
For all the customers that buy fruit and vegetables, they can bring their own bags to the supermarket, or have an option of buying a reusable bag that is made from recycled materials.
Apart from omitting plastic wraps from loose fruits and vegetables, they are also taking out packaged plastic trays for tomatoes, asparagus, corn and carrots as well as all plastic sleeves and lids found in herb pots. This will reduce a total output of plastic of approximately 489 tonnes.
Sainsbury’s wont stop there. They are also in the process of removing all non-recyclable plastics from all its stores like plastic cutlery, plastic trays, PVC and polystyrene trays and plastic egg trays.
Ocean plastics campaigner for Greenpeace UK, Ariana Densham said that:
“We’ve been urging Sainsbury’s to take action on plastics after it came bottom of our supermarket plastics league table last year. Sainsbury’s has an annual plastic footprint of nearly 120,000 tonnes, so this pledge to reduce plastics by one per cent is a very small step in the right direction, but nowhere near enough. It’s good common sense to get rid of plastic produce bags and bakery bags. We hope to see more measures like this from Sainsbury’s, and we urge them to eliminate unnecessary and unrecyclable plastics by 2020.”
In action to Greenpeace UK, CEO if Sainsbury’s Mike Coupe mentioned that:
“We are absolutely committed to reducing unnecessary plastic packaging in Sainsbury’s stores. Our customers expect us to be leading the way on major issues like this, so I am determined to remove and replace plastic packaging where we can and offer alternatives to plastic where packaging is still required to protect a product.”
Other supermarkets are joining in the bandwagon of the plastic-free trend within their stores, with Waitrose having a packaging-trial in their Oxford branch. This supermarket has asked their customers in Botley Road to take all their recycled containers for fruit and vegetables, wine, pasta, rice, and even cleaning materials while shopping. All prices for unpackaged goods being bought will be priced around 15% less than the packaged alternative.
Tesco and Morrison’s are also having trials of plastic free fruit and vegetables in select stores all over the UK.
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