There's a new technology in town that's brightening up the meat aisle of your local supermarket and reducing waste at the landfill.

The days of the black, polystyrene meat tray are numbered at Hamilton's New World Hillcrest with the roll out of a new blood sapping, plastic recyclable trays.

Clear trays for red meat and blue trays for chicken have lined about 80 per cent of the fridge the shelves since Monday.

GEORGE HEARD/FAIRFAX NZ New World Hillcrest owner-operator Warren Eddington is phasing foam trays out of his store in favour of recyclable trays.

Sausages are still on black non-recyclable foam trays but when owner operator Warren Eddington can guarantee supply, they'll be switched out too.

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Last year's trial of the new trays by Foodstuffs New Zealand convinced Eddington recyclable plastic trays was the way to go and started a massive phase-out of the foam packaging in favour of the new technology in retail meat .

"These ones here we're starting to roll out now," Eddington said, "they are fully recyclable. Food grade concerns are absolutely being looked after but we are also not filling up the landfills."

When trials began, Foodstuffs said hundreds of millions of foam trays from New World and Pak 'n Save stores around the country - the equivalent of 14 olympic-sized swimming pools - were sent to the tip each year.

Foam trays only spend a week in circulation until they are dumped and Eddington said his store will go through up to 4000 trays each week, amounting to more than 200,000 trays per year.

The company partners with Alto Packaging to develop the new polyethylene terephthalate (PET) trays, recognisable by the number '1' inside the three chasing arrows and can be put out for roadside collection.

And a new design on the base of the trays - rows of small clover leaf shaped dimples - does away with the blood soaker pad.

The small cavities capture liquid and keep it trapped even when the tray is turned upside-down. It takes a whack to dislodge water from the dimples of the tray.

"It sucks the liquid in there. It's brilliant," Eddington said.

"[Customers] can see what is on top, they can see what is underneath so they get a really good view of the product, especially in the clear ones."

Anyone concerned about the plastic wrap covering the meat can make use of the soft recycling collection area near the checkouts.

The end-to-end recycling system is something he wants to see throughout the entire store.

"We don't want to be chopping and changing all of the time and at the very, very first opportunity, we'll be having them right throughout the shop. Not only butchery but produce and deli and bakery. We're really going to go for recycling."

John Webber from the Packaging Forum praised Eddington and his team for taking a stand for the environment.

"We regard this as a positive change of a non-recyclable product to one which is recyclable and we congratulate the supermarket for its initiative," Webber said.

Eddington's butchery manager John Cox said after a quick adjustment to the wrapping machine, the trays work just as well as the old ones and they come in cost neutral.

"They have gone through faultlessly really," Cox said. "For too long we have been sending polystyrene trays to the landfill.

"People have had them at home. They reek and from a food safety point of view, I think these are a lot better."