Packaging Controversy in Supermarkets
November 2009
Supermarkets should contribute towards the cost of destroying excess packaging according to a report by the Local Government Association.
The report compared 29 products across the major supermarket chains and revealed that 40 percent of supermarket packaging cannot be recycled according to the study. The LGA believes that this action by supermarkets is undermining their customers “efforts to recycle by using excessive food packaging”.
The lightest packaging was of Tesco, at 645.5g, while Waitrose and Lidl came out worst.
Director of INCPEN (The Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment), Jane Bickerstaffe responded by stating, “ranking retailers on 29 products is nonsense. It’s not comparing like with like. Products have different supply chains and different amounts of transport packaging. Some products have a short shelf life, others are made to last longer. The amount of packaging has to reflect this.”
Chairman of the Local Government Association, Margaret Eaton, called for lighter and more recyclable packaging, describing Britain as “the dustbin of Europe. Bickerstaffe revealed that the UK uses less packaging per head than most other EU countries; the UK uses 147kg per person, Germany 158kg, and France 162kg. Bickerstaffe also insists that 85 percent of all packaging is recyclable, in comparison with the 40 percent that the LGA report found by looking at just 29 products.
Bickerstaffe expressed her concern that the LGA report is misinforming the public, and causing misplaced worries about the environment. She said if the product inside the packaging were to be damaged it would have greater economic and environmental impact than the packaging itself as in her words “It takes a huge amount of resources, energy and water to produce food in the first place. It is imperative that this effort is not wasted and that food reaches us in good condition. It must be transported, warehoused, retailed and then transported again and stored at home in the fridge, freezer or cupboard until we are ready to use it. On average there are ten times more resources and energy in food than in its packaging.”
WRAP believes that families in the UK could save up to £420 per year by eliminating food waste. INCPEN state that our efforts should be in reducing food waste, not on the less than £5 per year that it would cost to landfill any unrecycled packaging.
Michelle Williams from Artemis Solutions Group who specialise in recruiting for Food and Beverage sector comments “Both the viewpoints make sense. We should rationalise our packaging in such a way that we neither over specify packaging to create a recycling problem nor we reduce the packaging to the extent that we waste food and create a bigger environmental problem that that we seek to eliminate.”
