Iceland’s new packaging to reduce its plastic footprint by nearly 40 tonnes
Iceland has launched a series of new innovative packaging trials that will see the supermarket heavily reduce its plastic across nine products.
The nine products will see either plastic-free of heavily reduced packaging replace the current packaging, resulting in a reduction of plastic of 36.6 tonnes. The new packaging will be trialled in 115 Iceland stores across Cheshire, North Wales and the West Midlands.
Frozen vegetables and herbs including garlic, coriander, ginger and chilli will now be packaged in cartons. Iceland’s Soured Cream & Chive Dip and Sweet Chilli Houmous are now packaged in paperboard pots and the supermarket’s frozen 25pk Chicken Dippers and Chicken Popsters are packaged in first to market innovative paper laminate bags. All of these products have significantly reduced plastic packaging.
Iceland’s frozen Easy Peel Wild Red Shrimp will be the latest product to be completely free from plastic with a coated paper bag replacing the old packaging, a truly ground breaking innovation for frozen food.
Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland, said: “We are continuing to innovate our packaging as we endeavour to remove plastic packaging from our products. Our team is working tirelessly to launch these packaging trials as we continue to monitor customer responses to reduced product visibility with the new packaging.
“While we are very proud of the progress we have made so far, our journey to becoming plastic free would be much easier if Government set more aggressive, mandatory plastic reduction targets as a framework for business to operate within. Once again, we would also call upon our fellow retailers to make more ambitious commitments to reducing their plastic footprint so we can find solutions that reduce the need to rely on plastic packaging together.”
This is the latest in a series of industry leading trials which have seen the retailer lead the way in the fight against plastic, recently becoming the first major UK supermarket to fully publish its plastic footprint.
