Greenpeace volunteers were outside Tesco and the Co-op in Bitterne Park on Saturday (Sept 15) as part of national action campaigning against “pointless plastic packaging”.
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Local resident Nichola Paterson, second from left, with her son outside Tesco on Cobden Avenue signs the Greenpeace petition asking supermarkets to reduce the volume of throwaway plastic packaging. It’s so far been signed by 650,000 nationally according to the environmental organisation
Greenpeace said the aim was to “highlight to supermarkets the need to reduce excessive throwaway packaging by returning the responsibility for waste to the supermarket”.
Campaigners chatted with shoppers about packaging, asked them to sign a petition and suggested they hand back unnecessary packaging to the supermarkets.
Local resident Nichola Paterson, who said she was just popping in to Tesco, signed the petition. She said: “I do agree it would be great if the supermarkets could reduce their unnecessary packaging, especially of fruit and veg.”
She said it was fruit and veg that seemed a particular problem and that it would sometimes be nice to be able to buy individual items rather than a whole pack.
Greenpeace volunteers raise the issue with shoppers outside Cobden Bridge Co-op at Bitterne Park Triangle
Southampton Greenpeace volunteer Lyn Brayshaw said that she’d been amazed to recently see Tesco and the Co-op “still selling individual vegetables wrapped in plastic”.
“Packaging is a huge part of the plastic problem, and supermarkets are responsible for a lot of that packaging,” she said.
Single-use plastic packaging is a major contributor to the plastic pollution that’s having a devastating impact on our oceans, and UK supermarkets generate more than 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year, according to Greenpeace, which said public support for action on plastic pollution is “swelling”.
Elena Polisano, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: "Supermarkets selling masses of throwaway plastic packaging should be making great strides to stop their plastic from clogging up our oceans.
“Major grocery retailers have a huge role to play in cutting the overall amount of throwaway plastic being produced, making sure unnecessary and non-recyclable plastics are off the shelves by 2019, and switching to truly sustainable solutions. We’ve set this supermarket challenge to encourage retailers to go further, faster, to curb ocean plastic pollution.”
Greenpeace is calling on UK retailers to be more transparent on their use of single-use plastic, set targets to reduce it, and “urgently eliminate unnecessary and non-recyclable plastic packaging by 2019”.
A spokesperson for Tesco said that it is working hard to reduce packaging and has set ambitious targets to ensure that by 2025 all packaging will be fully recyclable or compostable.
“We are committed to reducing the total amount of packaging used across our business. Ideally we would like to move to a closed loop system. We will work with our suppliers to redesign and reduce all packaging materials and after consultation with our leading suppliers earlier this year we will remove all packaging that is hard to recycle from our business by 2019. To complete the journey to a closed loop approach, we stand ready to work with government to reform the current approach to recycling in the UK.”
Meanwhile for the Co-op a spokesperson said: “Reducing the environmental impact of our products is, and always has been, at the core of Co-op’s efforts. Our ambition is for 100% of our product packaging to be recyclable. Our Members and Customers expect us to help them to make more ethical choices, and we are committed to doing just that.”
The Co-op cited examples including changing plastic stems in its cotton buds to paper ones (it said others had taken 11 years to follow suit); not selling products containing plastic microbeads; replacing own-brand polystyrene pizza boards with cardboard; and saving an estimated 350 tonnes of plastic annually when it switches packaging for its water bottles. It says it’s also brewing up a fully biodegradable paper tea bag.
The Co-op also said that: “While being plastic-free seems on the face of things to be the right way to go, it is important to understand that packaging does protect products and reduces food waste"."