First it was the yoghurt pot lids, coloured milk bottle tops and best-before labels, removed in the name of the war on plastic and food waste. But when one supermarket sucked the air out of packs of mince, for some shoppers it was a bridge too far.
While Sainsbury’s had boasted a “supermarket first”, its vacuum-packed mince – part of an industry-wide effort to tackle the problem packaging behind nearly 70% of the UK’s plastic waste – made some people squeamish.
Minus the air, mince becomes a dense red slab. One customer said it resembled a body part (even if buying this way did eliminate 450 tonnes of plastic a year).
Vac-packed meat is a more common sight in the EU and US, as well as in the recipe boxes that have become popular in the UK in recent years. Mould and bacteria need oxygen to grow, so removing the air can help to keep food fresh for longer.
“I’ve never thought of mince as being a particularly attractive looking food group,” confesses Margaret Bates, the managing director of OPRL, the organisation behind the “recycle” and “do not recycle” labelling system, of the vac-pack criticism.
“We have a bit of a mixed messaging going on. We’re telling supermarkets ‘We don’t want the packaging but we don’t want any loss of quality or shelf life either’. We need to decide because convenience always has a cost.”
At the moment, supermarkets and manufacturers are rapidly reappraising the packaging of every product in light of government collection and packaging reforms that are designed to cut waste.
A deposit return scheme is due to start in Scotland this summer, and in the rest of the UK in 2025. The three-pronged attack also includes the introduction of a consistent household recycling regime in England that will mandate local authorities to collect the same stuff. The implementation date is yet to be confirmed but the other home nations are expected to align with the legislation.
The other leg is the extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme, which requires manufacturers to pay the full cost of packaging waste. It kicked in this year, with companies now required to collect data on the quantity of packaging they put on the market, with the first fees due to be collected in 2024.
The big supermarkets are all signatories to the UK Plastics Pact, led by the sustainability charity Wrap, which has set targets to hit by 2025 including eliminating problem plastic and ensuring that 100% of plastic packaging can be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
In its annual report, Catherine David, the UK plastics Pact’s director of collaboration and change, listed the wins which include: the removal of 620m plastic items from supermarket shelves since 2018; that rigid plastic packaging is now 92% recyclable; and that nearly half of its members were trialling reuse and refill.
But David added that the “hardest yards are ahead”, with consistent recycling collections and the EPR the “final pieces of the puzzle” needed to hit all its targets. While members had collectively removed 6% of plastic packaging since 2018, “we can do a lot more”, she suggested.
We asked readers for their views on the packaging changes they are seeing and, crucially, on whether they think they are an improvement.
While some steps, such as the removal of plastic packaging from Easter egg boxes and the shrink-wrapping of multipacks of baked beans and tuna, are universally welcomed, readers reckon others might be wrong-headed.
They questioned the removal of hard plastic lids from spillage-prone yoghurt and dip pots and the decision to switch ice-cream out of plastic tubs and into cardboard. Tim, from Derbyshire, told us he was still using Sainsbury’s ice-cream containers from the 60s and early 70s for storage in his workshop.
A small number said they would not buy the vac packs and would take their mince business to Marks & Spencer or their local butcher from now on. But they were outnumbered by those who supported the change, with one describing naysayers as “idiots”.
“Change is always difficult for people,” says Jayne Paramor, the strategic technical manager for plastics at Wrap, who compared the reaction to the new-look mince packs to when supermarkets started charging for plastic bags.
“There’s the early adopters and then there are people who are challenged by it,” she says. “Most people happily take their shopping bags to the supermarket these days and have got into that habit quite easily. It’s that initial alteration. As long as we support consumers to understand what’s going on and why … they can feel that they’re making a contribution to the problem.”
Some packaging changes are subtle. You may have recently tried, unsuccessfully, to wrestle the top off a fizzy drink only to be foiled by the bottle’s new “tethered” design. Consumers were guilty of not putting the lids back on bottles before recycling so they commonly ended up in the bin or as litter.
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Often plastic wrapping is being replaced by paper and card, with everything from sweets and crisps to washing powder tablets appearing in this more eco-friendly guise.
At Christmas, Quality Street came in recyclable paper wrappers rather than foil and plastic for the first time, and getting whites white is now greener as detergent brands such as Ariel switch to card rather than plastic tubs.
However, there were some complaints last year when a number of supermarkets, including Waitrose and the Co-op, moved from using coloured lids on milk flagons to clear ones. One disgruntled shopper blasted the move on social media, saying it had caused “chaos” when selecting the correct bottle from fridge.
Taking the pigment out of the lids increases their recyclability as there is greater demand for clear plastics and, as Waitrose explained at the time, “you can still select the milk you like by looking at the colour on the label”.
Hannah Kelly told us she was frustrated by the removal of hard plastic lids on dips. “Sainsbury’s have removed the plastic lid from their own brand dip pots of taramasalata. They now come with only a plastic film.”
The 28-year-old personal assistant says a pot used to provide three days of lunches, but without a lid she has to cover them with clingfilm, defeating the purpose.
In common with other supermarkets, the retailer has been removing single-use plastic lids from dairy products and more recently moved on to its dips. It now sells reusable silicone lids in its stores for £1.25.
“If you don’t use it in one go then you have to put it back in the fridge either uncovered or with the flimsy film, which doesn’t seal,” says Kelly. “It’s very annoying and will mean that the dips go off more quickly, causing food waste.”
One reader was concerned that they could not recycle the new Sainsbury’s mince packets at home. “The harder plastic tray could at least go in the recycling bin. And it made it easier to get the meat out of the packaging without contaminating half the kitchen.”
It does require more effort but it is getting easier to recycle plastic bags and wrappings like this (but rinse it first). There are now more than 6,000 points across the UK, 600 of which are located at Sainsbury’s stores. There is also a locator map on the Wrap website. The charity warned last year that achieving a 70% recycling rate for plastic packaging may not be possible without widespread collection of this waste from homes and workplaces, which is not due to be fully rolled out until 2027.
If your household tends to amass plastic bags and wrapping, Paramor at Wrap says: “Get those materials back to the front of stores so that we can get our hands on them and understand what they are and what to do with them. We all, as consumers and households, have a big role to play in this.”
