Walkers crisps has said it is putting £14 million of investment into more sustainable cardboard packaging for its bigger multipacks and a new type of film for its pallets.
The food giant – whose snacks includes Doritos, Wotsits, Monster Munch and Quavers – said using boxes for its 22 and 24 bag multipacks will enable it to remove 250 tonnes of virgin plastic from its supply chain each year. The new design follows a trial with Tesco.
Four years ago a social media campaign accused Leicester-based Walkers of adding to plastic waste by producing more than 7,000 non-recyclable crisp packets every minute. Back then the business agreed to offer a free national recycling scheme to stop millions of empty crisp packets ending up in landfill.
Announcing the latest measures the business said it was also planning to trial packaging made from recycled plastic for its snacks bags.
It said new, lighter stretch film will also be used to wrap around pallets at all its UK manufacturing sites as part of a commitment by parent company PepsiCo to eliminate virgin fossil-based plastic from its crisp and snack bags across Europe by 2030. It also wants to hit net zero emissions by 2040.
The new packing film has tiny air bubbles in it to reduce the amount of plastic used while retaining the same strength and stretch needed for distribution. It said reducing the amount of fossil-fuel based virgin plastic in the shrink wrap will cut the company’s annual carbon emissions by 465 tonnes.
Simon Devaney, sustainable packaging director at PepsiCo UK & Ireland said: “We are constantly exploring new scalable solutions and this investment marks an important step forward, delivering a huge reduction in virgin plastic across some of our best-selling ranges, while also helping to tackle our carbon footprint.
“Reducing virgin plastic across our supply chain is a key part of our commitment to creating a world where packaging never becomes waste.”
Last spring Walkers said it was planning to make more than half its snacks low-calorie or healthy within the next three years.
It said it was planning to spend £35 million over the next three years on a programme reformulating some of its existing range and bringing new healthier products to the market.
