Supermarket plastic rises despite reduction pledges

Supermarket plastic has risen to 900,000 tonnes according to an Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Greenpeace report.

Seven out of 10 top UK supermarkets increased their plastic footprint, while Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury’s registered slight reductions.

Aldi and Asda were at the bottom of the table for reducing plastic use and Iceland dropped from the top spot last year to seventh place this year.

The survey showed the main cause for the increase was lack of action from big brands being stocked in the supermarkets, meaning grocers failed to enforce rules with suppliers.

Tesco was the only supermarket to give suppliers an ultimatum to cut excessive plastic packaging or risk being delisted.

Juliet Phillips from the EIA said: “It’s shocking to see that despite unprecedented awareness of the pollution crisis, the amount of single-use plastic used by the UK’s biggest supermarkets has actually increased in the past year.

“Our survey shows that grocery retailers need to tighten up targets to drive real reductions in single-use packaging and items. We need to address our throwaway culture at the root through systems change, not materials change – substituting one single-use material for another is not the solution.”

BRC director of food and sustainability Andrew Opie said: “Retailers are taking many steps to remove plastics from their stores, such as removing all polystyrene packaging and plastic cutlery and trialling packaging free and refillable options.

“This helps explain how supermarkets achieved a drop in the amount of plastic across their own brand products. However, more needs to be done, which is why retailers have set challenging reduction targets and are committed to ensuring all packaging is 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable.”