Waitrose moves away from black plastic with coloured recycled tray

Waitrose & Partners is launching coloured recycled packaging for its ready meals, replacing black plastic.

The new trays, made predominantly from mixed coloured PET bottles and trays, means the packaging may be a different colour every time it is produced, depending on what has being recycled.

The move allows Waitrose to ensure that its trays are more widely recyclable while it continues to replace single-use plastic.

The retailer recently launched the world’s first home compostable packaging for its Italian ready meals, replacing black plastic with a fibre-based tray.

The packaging innovation, produced by Waitrose for Faerch, will see even more ready meals taken out of black plastic, stopping 500 tonnes of black plastic going to landfill.

Waitrose has already eliminated black plastic on its fresh meat, fish, poultry, and fruit and veg, and the new packaging helps Waitrose move closer to removing all black plastic by the end of the year.

Karen Graley, Packaging Manager for Waitrose & Partners, said: “This is an exciting example of packaging innovation that helps us move even more ready meals out of hard to recycle black plastic into a rainbow of recycled content that can be recycled again and again.”