From: Packaging News

A North London convenience store has introduced dedicated plastic free zones featuring products including fresh fruit and vegetables and meats.

Thornton’s Budgens store in Camden’s Belsize Park has assembled more than 1,700 plastic-free products using a variety of materials as alternatives to plastic packaging, such as beechwood nets, pulp, paper, metal, glass, cellulose and cartonboard.

Andrew Thornton, Thornton’s Budgens founder, claimed to have taken only 10 weeks to remove plastic packaging from more than 1,500 products – a task he said supermarkets have said could take years to implement.

“The issue of plastic is one that can no longer be ignored so we’ve chosen to be the first mainstream supermarket in the UK to introduce Plastic Free Zones. This means our customers will be able to do a comprehensive shop without the need to use any plastic packaging,” he said.

“Plastic Free Squirrels are one of 1,500 plastic-free products that our customers can now buy. Our aim is to show the big supermarkets that it is not as difficult to go plastic-free as they think. If we with our limited resources in 10 weeks can introduce more than a thousand plastic-free products just imagine what the major chains could achieve.”

Environmental group A Plastic Planet has called for an urgent transformation of the UK’s approach to waste management, urging the government to use the new plastics tax to fund a national infrastructure that mandates both recycling and composting.

Sian Sutherland, A Plastic Planet Co-Founder, said: “Thornton’s Budgens are disrupting the market and showing that wrapping something as fleeting as food in something as long-lasting as plastic is the definition of madness.”