Banana bags will be replaced by paper bands soon. Morrisons will eliminate 45 million single-use plastic bags (180 tonnes of plastic) from its stores each year. To date, more than two million pre-packed plastic bags have been removed in a successful 12-week trial.
Morrisons has had its headquarters in Bradford since 1899, and it operates 498 stores serving millions of customers each week with around 113,000 colleagues.
Stronger paper bands will prevent banana bunches from breaking. The papers are FSC certified. The bands’ information will include: Country of Origin; Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade, and Soil Association Certification; and, barcodes. It will take them six months to complete the roll out.
Morrisons is seeking to reduce plastic use and return to traditional grocery packaging methods with the ban.
The Morrisons Company recently began delivering milk directly to its supermarkets by using glass milk bottles. After the customer returns the bottle, it is collected, sanitized, and is able to be reused for ten years or more.
The store also reintroduced paper and string bags for fruit and vegetables, provided sturdy papers at checkouts and refilled customer containers at counters at Market Street to help avoid single use plastic packaging.
According to Elio Biondo, Morrisons’ Banana Buyer: “Bananas have their own packaging – their skins. They also grow in bunches which generally means they don’t need bagging together. So a simple sturdy paper band is the ideal alternative. In trials the quality of the bananas has remained the same, so this switch out of plastic is a no-brainer.”
In the next five years, Morrisons expects to reduce its own-brand plastic packaging by 50 per cent. Through initiatives that were launched in the last year, 8,000 tonnes of plastic will be removed annually. Morrisons own-brand plastic packaging can now be recycled in 83 percent of cases.
As part of the Responsible Business Awards run by HRH The Prince of Wales’ Business in the Community Network, Morrisons was named the UK’s most environmentally responsible company for its work on plastics reduction.
