Companies, food producers and trade, are under increasing public pressure to stop using plastics and yet there is still a market shift away from plastic for food packaging. Companies are only just beginning to replace disposable plastic with other disposable alternatives. This change could accelerate.
Based on interviews with representatives of five of the UK’s largest supermarkets and five major consumer goods and beverage companies, the Green Alliance study “Plastic promises – What the grocery sector is really doing about packaging” concludes that switching to packaging alternatives is more harmful to our environment than using existing plastic solutions.
“Plastic is just the tip of the ‘single use’ iceberg. Under pressure from the public to act on plastic pollution, companies are on the verge of swapping to other materials with new, and potentially greater, environmental consequences, including higher carbon emissions.”, says Libby Peake, Senior policy adviser bei der Green Alliance UK Author of the study.
In addition, the diverse “savings initiatives”, the frequently observed “greenwashing marketing” or announcements of bans on plastic packaging are causing increasing uncertainty among consumers.
