Friday 10 January 2020

Co-op: 100% recyclable packaging three years ahead of schedule

Co-op has announced that it has banned black plastic packaging from all of its products and by the summer of 2020 it will have phased out all non-recyclable plastics and replaced them with those that can be reused or easily recycled.

The UK supermarket chain says everything from ready meal trays, crisps packets, to sandwich cartons and film, all packaging used will be easy to recycle whether via kerbside collection or a closed loop in house scheme.

The move will run in tandem with the largest ever UK-wide scheme to recycle plastic film, which local councils do not presently collect for recycling.

The Co-op makes over 750 million pieces of plastic film each year and will make it easy to recycle by developing its own national collection programme for the material.

After a spring store trial, the scheme will be rolled out nationally across the retailer’s store estate by the summer.

According to Co-op, only half a million of the 2.3 million tonnes of plastic placed on the UK market every year is being recycled, resulting in 1.2 million tonnes of plastic packaging used for consumer goods ending up in landfill. It says one of the main reasons is down to a lack of knowledge about which packaging can be recycled, along with local authorities lacking the facilities to deal with it.

Jo Whitfield, Co-op Food CEO, said:  “From today, black plastic is banned and by the summer we’ll have pioneered a UK-wide recycling scheme for hard-to-recycle plastic film.”