Sainsbury’s has signalled a big initiative to eliminate plastic from Britain’s High Streets. 150 million plastic trays and bags on Sainsbury’s ready meals and organic food will disappear every year and be replaced with compostable packaging. This move will save 3,550 tonnes of plastic from Sainsbury's yearly output alone. Sainsbury’s Chief Execetive stated that the company had already reduced excessive packaging on Easter eggs and more attention was given to recyclable packing. He was confident that putting 500 types of food in compostable packaging would significantly help to reduce the thread for the environment. He considered it as possible that customers could halve their household waste by composting in the near future.

Compostable packaging was pioneered by Sainsbury’s in 2002 and had been trialled on a small range of Sainsbury’s organic apples, tomatoes and potatoes first. In the case of of organic tomatoes, for example, everything can be composted at home. The company is the largest single user of this kind of packaging in Europe. More loose fruit and vegetables are sold than by any other retailer - 70 %, compared with Tesco (50 %) and ASDA (40 %).

Since January 2007, almost 80 % of organic fruit and vegetables are available in compostable packaging. Ready meals, organic sausages and organic whole birds will follow by fall 2007. As a further step, the company's packaging guidelines were made much clearer on food labels.

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