Submitted by: The Two Sides Team July 2, 2018

With the growing public concerns of high volumes of plastic rubbish, many businesses have been looking for sustainable alternatives.  A preferred packaging material for environmental-friendliness, recyclability and practicality is paper and cardboard.

The country’s fourth-largest supermarket chain Morrisons, have decided to replace their plastic single use produce bags used for loose fresh fruit and vegetables, and are bringing back the brown paper bag. These bags were rolled out on Monday 2nd July 2018 and will be in all Morrisons stores by the end of summer.

The return of the brown paper bag is an attempt to reduce plastic waste. These paper  bags will be 100% recyclable and will have a see-through panel that will enable customers and colleagues to identify the contents inside. Morrisons is also encouraging their customers to bring and use their own containers for their meat and fish counters. An incentive of 100 loyalty card points will be rewarded to those customers when they bring their own container. By 2025, Morrisons aims to make all plastic packaging on own-branded products reusable, recyclable or compostable. Similarly, Iceland have decided to drastically reduce their plastic packaging on its own-label products.

Other supermarkets have introduced similar initiatives to reduce plastic packaging within stores. An example, would be Marks and Spencer replacing plastic cutlery with wooden alternatives, which is a move towards the company having ‘widely recyclable’  product packaging by 2022.

Alongside Morrisons, leading supermarkets have joined WRAP’s Plastic Pact, an organisation whose goal is to ensure that 100% of plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.

Source: The Guardian

Photo credit:  © Gino Santa Maria/Adobe Stock

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