Huge Carbon Footprints?…….
……..Supermarkets are falling behind local high street retailers and markets in reducing packaging waste, a survey has found.
Up to 38% of food packaging in a typical supermarket shopping basket cannot be recycled, according to a report by the Local Government Association. Its second investigation into the problem discovered only a 2% improvement from last year.
Analysis by the British Market Research Bureau into six leading supermarkets, a local retailer, and a market, concluded that retailers still had “a lot further to go” if Britain is to meet its recycling targets and avoid landfill tax.
Marks & Spencer and Lidl were the worst offenders in terms of the proportion of packaging that could be recycled. Only 62% of a range of items bought from their stores could be recycled, compared with 76% from high street retailers and 74% from markets.
M&S also used the second-highest total amount of packaging at 807g for a basket, while Sainsbury’s used the third-highest amount by weight at 746g. Asda’s packaging weighed the least among the supermarkets at 646g, 69% of which was recyclable.
Items found to have “excessive and unnecessary” layers of packaging ranged from pizza to biscuits. Fresh pizzas were found to contain several layers, including a plastic or polystyrene base and shrink-wrap, contained within a box. Biscuits were packed in plastic tubes in seven out of eight retailers, while some also had trays, adding to the waste.
However, the report stressed there had been some improvement from last year, for instance, broccoli was sold without shrink wrap in some stores. I have noticed that ASDA now sell it free of wrapping and if Ii buy things such as peppers or buternut squash I never use a plastic bag because I always wash my fruit & veg, or as in the case of squash, I peel it. However, celeriac is still shrink-wrapped…why?
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