All major supermarkets will stop selling black plastic by the end of the year (Picture: Getty)

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Asda will stop using black plastic in their products by the end of the year, according to a new report.

The four major supermarkets will follow in the steps of Morrison’s which announced a ban on the hard to recycle material last week, The Grocer reported.

Iceland and Aldi were also planning to drop black plastic from their own-label food and drink ranges by the end of 2020.

Currently, tens of thousands of tonnes of black plastic each year end up in landfill or being incinerated because it contains a carbon pigment that cannot be detected by recycling machines.


Sainsbury’s announced it would remove the hard to recycle material by December (Picture: Getty)

Tesco said it would have removed all black plastic by the end of December and was now ‘working with branded suppliers to do the same.’



Asda also recently announced it had removed 45 million ready meal trays containing black plastic from its range which it said alone removed ‘775 tonnes of previously unrecyclable plastic.’

It plans to remove it all by the end of 2019.

Sainsbury’s was another supermarket on course for a full ban by the end of December – by which time 6,000 tonnes of material will have switched to recyclable alternatives.

Waitrose said it had removed nearly 90% of the 2,291 tonnes of black plastic it uses as of the end of October and was ‘well on track’ to get rid of it fully by the end of December.

The Co-op said the same thing meaning the material will have been removed from over 300 lines.

Morrison’s was the first to announce the ban last week (Picture: Getty)

Iceland head of recycling Stuart Lendrum said he expected his supermarket to have removed black plastic by the end of January next year.

He said: ‘We have been making good progress with eliminating black plastic across the board.’

The magazine said Marks & Spencer is further behind but said it was on track to remove the material before the end of next year.

Aldi also has a target of the end of 2020.

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