Nestlé has announced that it is slimming down the packaging for its confectionery sharing bags on sale in the UK and Ireland, in a move that will reduce the plastic used in said bags by 15% on average.
Nestlé sells approximately 140 million confectionery sharing bags in the UK and Ireland every year, and the group said that the packaging redesign will save close to one million square metres of packaging per year.
Products such as Milkybar, Aero Bubbles, Munchies, Rolo, Yorkie, and Rowntree’s Randoms will now be packaged in narrower pouches, with the group removing 83 tonnes of virgin plastic from its supply chain every year, it said.
Plastic Use
“Nestlé is working hard to reduce its use of virgin plastic by one third by 2025," said Cheryl Allen, head of sustainability at Nestlé Confectionery. "Removing 15 per cent of the packaging from our sharing bags is an important step towards this goal. The move will not only save on the amount of virgin plastic we use each year, it will have significant benefits throughout our supply chain in the UK and Ireland.
“For example, we can now pack more sharing bags at a time, which means fewer lorries are needed to transport them. In total, we will be able to take the equivalent of 331 lorries off UK roads every year, saving 71472 road miles and 130 tonnes of CO2 emissions.”
Nestlé is also seeking to make it easier to recycle plastic wrappers that are not collected in kerbside collections, through a partnership with TerraCycle, through which flexible plastic packaging can be dropped off at around 300 TerraCycle recycling points across the UK and Ireland.
Other initiatives Nestlé is undertaking to reduce packaging include making all Smarties packaging paper-based, removing approximately 250 million plastic packs sold worldwide every year; investing up to £1.6 billion globally to lead the shift from virgin plastics to food-grade recycled plastics; and creating an Institute of Packaging Sciences to evaluate and develop various sustainable packaging materials and to collaborate with industrial partners to develop new packaging materials and solutions.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
