Sainsbury’s to cut down on plastic usage following intense scrutiny from Greenpeace

In light of mounting pressure to eliminate unnecessary and unrecyclable plastic by 2020, second largest UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has vowed to step up its sustainability game. Reportedly, it will dramatically cut down its plastic usage and facilitate a recycling movement by the proposed deadline.

The UK grocer is currently the target of a March 2019 campaign by environmental activist group Greenpeace. The supermarket came last in a 2018 survey of supermarket plastic policies – as it was found to have made the least progress on plastics reduction since January of last year.According to the Greenpeace analysis, Sainsbury’s promised to cut 77 tonnes of plastic packaging, while Asda achieved 6,500 tonnes of reductions.

Since April 30, Sainsbury’s states that it has been removing plastic packaging from its sweetheart and savoy cabbages, cutting a further 100 tonnes of plastic packaging over the next year, as part of its drive to significantly reduce plastic usage. Additionally, the company is planning to remove all plastic packaging from Christmas crackers this year. By the end of 2019, the company hopes to eliminate the use of hard to recycle plastics (such as polystyrene and PVC), further removing 1280 tonnes of plastic across all products. (Packaging Insights)