SAINSBURY'S
UK retailer aims to save 450 t/y of plastic with switch to vacuum packaging / Customers voice concerns over social media
 Sainsbury’s plans to retail all of its beef mince products in vacuum packaging to reduce plastics use (Photo: Sainsbury’s) |
Supermarket giant Sainsbury’s (London; www.sainsburys.co.uk) has said it will save 450 t of plastic a year by retailing all of its beef mince products in vacuum packaging. The move, which it claims is a UK first, will use a minimum of 55% less plastic than its traditional, plastic tray packaging.
Related: Sainsbury’s scheme for customers to recycle flexible packaging waste
Sainsbury’s recently announced the removal of single-use plastic lids across a number of its own-brand dairy products, including yoghurt, crème fraiche, sour cream, cream, cottage cheese, custard and dip pots, saving 71 mn pieces of plastic per year. The group said the moves were part of a long-term plan to halve its use of plastic packaging in own brand products by 2025.
Other supermarket chains are making similar strides in this direction. In Germany, for example, the Schwarz group, with its retail chains Lidl and Kaufland, is making progress implementing its REset Plastic strategy, which aims to use 20% fewer plastics by 2025, among other goals.
Related: Sainsbury’s scheme for customers to recycle flexible packaging waste
Sainsbury’s recently announced the removal of single-use plastic lids across a number of its own-brand dairy products, including yoghurt, crème fraiche, sour cream, cream, cottage cheese, custard and dip pots, saving 71 mn pieces of plastic per year. The group said the moves were part of a long-term plan to halve its use of plastic packaging in own brand products by 2025.
Other supermarket chains are making similar strides in this direction. In Germany, for example, the Schwarz group, with its retail chains Lidl and Kaufland, is making progress implementing its REset Plastic strategy, which aims to use 20% fewer plastics by 2025, among other goals.
Social media unhappy with the move
While Sainsbury's might be sticking to its reduce-plastics commitment, customers of the supermarket giant have voiced dismay over the new packaging on social media. One said the mince beef packaging “feels very medical – like I’ve just bought someone’s kidney to cook at home”. Another said it was “too compressed and does not look appetising”.
A Twitter user said on the platform, “#sainsburys #mince such a bad idea as a butcher of over 20 years mince should not be vacuum packed like this all its going to do is ruin it send it black and make it taste awful, uses less plastic but you'll sell loads less mince now I wouldn’t buy it ever”, while another claimed to have had an altered-taste experience: “Have just cooked dinner with #Sainsburys mince in new packaging. Absolutely tasteless, weirdly clumpy. There is a real difference in spite of what they say.”
Richard Crampton, Sainsbury’s director of fresh food, told the Guardian that the new packet was “exactly the same out of the same machines” as that in the previous ones. “The product is absolutely identical,” he said.
A Twitter user said on the platform, “#sainsburys #mince such a bad idea as a butcher of over 20 years mince should not be vacuum packed like this all its going to do is ruin it send it black and make it taste awful, uses less plastic but you'll sell loads less mince now I wouldn’t buy it ever”, while another claimed to have had an altered-taste experience: “Have just cooked dinner with #Sainsburys mince in new packaging. Absolutely tasteless, weirdly clumpy. There is a real difference in spite of what they say.”
Richard Crampton, Sainsbury’s director of fresh food, told the Guardian that the new packet was “exactly the same out of the same machines” as that in the previous ones. “The product is absolutely identical,” he said.
08.03.2023 Plasteurope.com 1120 [252326-0]
Published on 08.03.2023