Black plastic will be banned from supermarkets by Christmas

18 November 2019, 17:48

Before the end of the year you won't see any black coloured plastic in any of the supermarkets.

All the main British supermarkets have announced they'll have banned black plastic for packaging their products by the end of the year.

Tesco, Sainsbury's Waitrose and Asda will stop using them by Christmastime, and are following Morrisons' step in the right direction, revealed The Grocer recently.

Morrison's kicked things off with a ban on the hard to recycle material last week, as tens of thousands of tonnes of black plastic end up in landfill.

It's very damaging for the environment, and Aldi as well as Aldi are planning to drop it from their own-label food and drink ranges by the end of 2020.

This is because of a carbon pigment within the plastic which cannot be detected by recycling machines, so its either sent to landfill or incinerated.

Tesco said it would have removed all black plastic by the end of December and was now ‘working with branded suppliers to do the same.’

Asda also recently announced it had removed 45 million ready meal trays containing black plastic from its range which it said alone removed "775 tonnes of previously unrecyclable plastic."

It plans to remove it all by the end of 2019.

Sainsbury’s was another supermarket on course for a full ban by the end of December – by which time 6,000 tonnes of material will have switched to recyclable alternatives.

Waitrose said it had removed nearly 90% of the 2,291 tonnes of black plastic it uses as of the end of October and was "well on track" to get rid of it fully by the end of December.

The Co-op also agreed, meaning the material will have been removed from over 300 lines - great news.