Recycle for the future
Packaging makes life easier -- food is easier to store when it's hygienically sealed, picking up a bag of apples is quicker than selecting fruit by hand and a best-before date is stamped on every bag or pack, erasing any fears about freshness. But our mountain of waste packaging is growing daily. It's estimated that British households produce around 10mt of waste packaging every year. Currently, the vast majority of the UK's rubbish is disposed of in landfill sites, but space is running out and food producers and supermarkets have begun to look for more sustainable and responsible methods of waste disposal.
In 2002, Somerfield was the first supermarket chain to introduce degradable carrier bags into its stores. Tesco followed suit a couple of years later. These changes are significant when you consider that shoppers in Britain use up to 20bn plastic bags a year -- that's an annual total of around 323 bags a household. Regular supermarket carrier bags can take up to a 100 years to degrade and, despite recycling units outside hundreds of stores, only 2% of them are recycled. The bio-degradable bags are fully approved by the Soil Association, environmentally sound and take only three years to vanish totally.
As part of Marks & Spencer's responsible approach to packaging, the company has taken a long hard look at which areas of its food business produce large amounts of waste. It discovered that lunchtime products and fresh fruit and vegetables are the greatest culprits and in response has begun to use recycled and recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to package its Food To Go range and all sandwich packs are now made from 100% sustainable cardboard. To complete the loop, there are recycling bins situated outside four of Marks & Spencer's Central London stores, encouraging consumers to get into the recycling habit.
It's reassuring to know food retailers and manufacturers are taking the recycling issue seriously. Their size and influence means that even the small changes they make can have a profoundly positive effect on the environment.
Claire Allen is cookery assistant at Good Housekeeping Magazine
