Morrisons has announced a number of new measures to reduce its contribution to plastic pollution, a topic which has stirred a lot of response in the media and public eye. This includes the pledge to ensure its packaging will be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
Morrisons will be a signatory to the WRAP UK Plastics Pact, a scheme which is aiming to encourage businesses to look at the way they use plastic and how they can prevent plastic pollution.
Morrisons has now announced four important and vital steps forward in making sure it tackles its own consumption and provision of plastics. It will allow customers to use their own containers for meat and fish, which came into force in May; work through its own brand products to identify, reduce and remove any unnecessary plastic packaging; trial the effect of removing plastic packaging from fruit and vegetables in a number of stores; making more packaging recyclable, with one of the first pieces of packaging to be replaced being the black plastic tray, to be phased out by 2019; and fitting drinking water fountains into new stores, adding to its existing offer of providing free drinking water to those who wish to refill their own bottles.
From results of the store’s own research, plastic reduction is now the third most important issue to Morrisons customers. With 82% of the stores’ plastics being recylable, it still wants to achieve 100% and will collaborate with suppliers, retailers, local authorities and WRAP. The store has discontinued buying plastic drinking straws and plastic-stemmed cotton buds, and no longer sells the 5p single-use plastic carrier bags.
With a Morrisons store in town, Bude-based environmental action groups, A Greener Bude, led by a number of individuals and projects encouraging their town to be more sustainable, and Bude Cleaner Seas Project are delighted with the news.
A spokesperson from A Greener Bude and Bude Cleaner Seas Project said: “It’s encouraging to see Morrisons introducing new initiatives. Since the beginning of May, customers are now able to take their own reusable containers to any Morrisons store and use at the meat, fish or deli counters, and for a month they will be rewarding customers with 100 loyalty card points when they bring containers up until July 22.
“Wherever possible, it is best to refuse plastic and use a reusable container so we welcome these changes and we’re delighted to see Morrisons incentivising this.
“Brown paper bags have also been introduced to some stores and will be in all by the end of the summer. Morrisons believe this will stop the use of more than 150-million small plastic bags each year.
“In addition to this, the store has stopped the sale of single use plastic bags and will now only be selling their bag for life. There’s a lot more work to do, but these are big steps in the right direction.”