A Winton farm store owner has claimed that Tesco’s target to remove 350 tonnes of plastic a year from the environment will be a “challenge” amidst new changes to packaging methods.
Roebridge Farms on Wimborne Road have made reductions to the amount of non-recyclable materials used in the store, but owner, Pete Tope, says that the process is not cheap.
He said: “We do have reusable cardboard but they’re just too expensive and that’s the problem you’re going to get. We can’t afford to do it as a small business and on a bigger scale like Tesco they definitely can’t afford to do it – but it is an alternative.
“That’s where we’re in this whole catch22 because the options are there but it’s just the price.”
Tesco today announced that they plan to remove plastic wraps from multi-pack tins in an effort to contribute to their waste reduction goal, a decision backed by environmentalist group, GreenPeace, who described this packaging as “pointless plastics”.
Customers will now have to purchase these products in a multi-buy deal, a move supported by tinned food giants Heinz and Green Giant.
Working in partnership with suppliers like @HeinzUK, we’re removing 67m pieces of plastic by replacing tinned multipacks with plastic-free multibuys across all our Tesco own brand and branded products. Find out more: https://t.co/dPXD8YkXNR pic.twitter.com/8US4oO7MEx
— Tesco News (@tesconews) January 24, 2020
However, Pete Tope raised concerns over the difficulty of having an entirely organic process due to the limits of suppliers and the materials that they use.
“Unfortunately they will always use what they use. It’s the same with wood. We get so many wooden crates we can’t return them, nobody wants them so that’s also a waste of trees. It’s a no-win situation, I think but at least they’re trying”.
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