Supermarkets are reacting to anti-packaging campaigns

Calls for a re-think on packaging have come from such diverse sources as the Women's Institute, which ran a very vocal campaign for a couple of years, and students at the University of Plymouth, who urge people to surreptitiously put an overpackaging logo onto abundantly encased supermarket products.

Consumers are starting to listen, according to new figures by AC Nielsen which showed that the majority of Americans would give up all forms of packaging provided for convenience purposes if it would benefit the environment.

Of course, if consumer preferences change, supermarkets will usually follow suit or risk being left behind. In the US, Wal-Mart rolled out a packaging scorecard on 100,000 products in February that allows shoppers to see how different suppliers compare on everything from CO2 production to recycled content.

Over here, things haven't been quite as drastic as that, but progress has still been made. Asda, Wal-Mart's UK arm, has committed to reduce its own-label packaging by 25% this year and is looking at it's own version of the scorecard for 2009.

Similarly, according to Packaging News UK, Tesco has asked all its suppliers to complete a data sheet detailing information on recycled content and country of origin and applies to primary, secondary and tertiary packaging. Just this week, Sainsbury's introduced a trial in Scotland that uses compostable trays for packaging its own-brand organic chickens. It is also on target to convert all its own-brand ready meals to compostable packaging by the end of the month.

“Our customers tell us that food packaging is extremely important to them and can determine what they buy, so our packaging team has been looking at ways to address these concerns,” said Justin King, Chief Executive of Sainsbury's, which claims to have more compostable packaging than any other UK supermarket.

But how far will supermarkets really go? That depends on consumers and the current evidence suggests changes may remain limited at this stage. Although the Nielsen survey revealed a general drive towards reducing packaging, shoppers hesitated once questions of freshness and longevity were raised.

Indeed, only a small minority of respondents said they'd be willing to give up packaging designed for keeping food fresher for longer or keeping products in good condition and 10% said they would not give up any form of packaging to help save the environment.

“There are still a lot of hearts and minds to be won,” said Packaging Federation chief executive Dick Searle.