The UK’s largest supermarket said its own-label crackers were plastic-free for the first time – cutting more than 14m pieces from the seasonal range – while a layer of plastic had been removed from packaging on Christmas puddings and sponges, saving 1.78m pieces of plastic.
Sarah Bradbury, Tesco’s quality director, said: “It is an absolute priority of ours to remove and reduce the amount of plastic in our stores to the minimum and ensure everything we use is recycled and kept out of the environment. Christmas time is no exception and we want to do our bit to help customers have more sustainable celebrations.”
Nina Schrank, a plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “This is great news from Tesco, and it’s an important commitment given the damage we all know that glitter and throwaway plastic is doing to our marine environment. Now we want to see Tesco go even further and show even greater ambition, by setting market-leading targets for reuse and refill systems both in store and online across as much of their range as possible.”