Nestlé in the UK and Ireland has redesigned its confectionery sharing bags to use significantly less packaging – a move that will see at least 83 tonnes of virgin plastic taken out of its supply chain every year. Nestlé sells approximately 140 million confectionery sharing bags in the UK and Ireland every year; this change will save almost 1 million square metres of packaging – equivalent in area to 131 football pitches.

Cheryl Allen, Head of Sustainability for Nestlé Confectionery said: “Nestlé is working hard to reduce its use of virgin plastic by one third by 2025. Removing 15 per cent of the packaging from our sharing bags is an important step towards this goal. The move will not only save on the amount of virgin plastic we use each year, it will have significant benefits throughout our supply chain in the UK and Ireland.

“For example, we can now pack more sharing bags at a time, which means fewer lorries are needed to transport them. In total, we will be able to take the equivalent of 331 lorries off UK roads every year, saving 71472 road miles and 130 tonnes of CO2 emissions.”

Alongside reducing the amount of packaging used, Nestlé is also making it easier to recycle plastic wrappers which are not currently collected at kerbside. Its partnership with TerraCycle gives consumers the ability to recycle confectionery wrappers now, while changes in technology and infrastructure are being worked on.

Nestlé has also joined the Flexible Packaging Consortium with Ella’s Kitchen, Mars and Taylors of Harrogate, working with waste and recycling experts SUEZ. The consortium recently released a new report providing recommendations to increase flexible packaging recycling in the UK.

Image Source: Nestlé, Flickr, License