Asda boosts war on plastic with food packaging and bags pledge

ASDA will be the first of the ‘ big four’ supermarkets to drop plastic packaging from own-label frozen foods.

The chain said yesterday that it is also changing polystyrene pizza bases to cardboard and switching coloured plastic drinks bottles to clear so they are easier to recycle.

The moves are part of a wider commitment to slash use of plastic on Asda own-label products by at least 10 per cent this year – with further reductions to come.

They represent another victory for the Daily Mail’s Turn The Tide On Plastic campaign, which has seen a raft of businesses vow to ditch what the Prime Minister has called ‘avoidable’ plastic.

Asda also pledged to follow Tesco and Sainsbury’s in no longer offering single-use plastic carrier bags, reducing the number handed out at tills by an estimated 165million a year.

Profits from the 5p charge on the bags are given to good causes which might, in theory, then lose out if they were no longer sold. However, Asda has pledged to make up the loss by donating money from sales of its stronger, reusable, bags for life to charities.

In a further attack on plastic waste, Asda will remove singleuse cups and plastic cutlery from its offices this year – and they will be gone from all stores by the end of next year.

The chain is also introducing a zero-profit, reusable coffee cup to give customers a cheap alternative to single-use cups.

The Iceland chain has already promised to remove all plastic packaging from its food and drink within five years, starting with black plastic trays that cannot be recycled. Though Asda’s pledge of 10 per cent is less ambitious, the US-owned retailer has much larger sales and believes it will be able to do away with plastic in its frozen food packaging before Iceland.

Asda is also working with experts in packaging at the Leeds Beckett University retail institute as well as one of its biggest suppliers, ABP, to develop alternatives.

Significantly, Asda said it will share its new packaging options with rivals in order to speed the removal of plastic from shelves.

Tesco, Iceland, Co-op, CocaCola and others have come out in favour of a deposit- andreturn scheme on plastic bottles and drinks cans to boost recycling and reduce litter.

Asda says that action is needed on littering, but it opposes a deposit scheme.

The supermarket is creating the Asda Plastic Ideas Hub, offering a £10,000 award for every idea that can offer a largescale alternative to plastic. Asda’s Roger Burnley said: ‘We have taken steps such as reducing the amount of plastic in our water bottles and removing harmful microbeads from all our own-brand cosmetics.’

He added: ‘In the last month, I’ve asked my colleagues to work out where we could remove more plastic from our products, without impacting the quality of what is inside.

‘For example, we are going to change the polystyrene bases in our pizzas to cardboard, removing 178 tonnes of plastic.

‘We’re also going to switch the 2.4million plastic straws used in our cafes each year to paper.

‘By changing our coloured drinks bottles to clear plastic, 500 more tonnes of plastic will be recycled.’