Britain’s leading supermarkets create more than 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year, according to an investigation by the Guardian which reveals how top chains keep details of their plastic footprint secret.



As concern over the scale of unnecessary plastic waste grows, the Guardian asked Britain’s eight leading supermarkets to explain how much plastic packaging they sell to consumers and whether they would commit to a plastic-free aisle in their stores.



The chains have to declare the amount of plastic they put on the market annually under an EU directive. But the information is kept secret, and Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, Asda and Lidl all refused the Guardian’s request, with most saying the information was “commercially sensitive”.



Profile Plastic - what's the problem? Show Hide Why the sudden focus on plastics? Mankind produces roughly its entire body weight in plastics every year. But the vast majority of it is either not recycled, unrecyclable, or doesn't get reused once it's been recycled. Volumes ending up in the natural environment are surging. Plastic can take as much as 500 years to decompose.

What are the implications? Plastic is ubiquitous – and often deadly. It kills sea creatures that eat it but cannot digest it. It gets into the human food chain by contaminating the fish that we eat. It is even in our tap water. There is no science about the long-term impact of humans ingesting plastic.

What is to be done? Taxing plastic bags – or even banning them outright as Kenya has done – has changed consumer and producer behaviour. But what next? Deposit return schemes for plastic bottles work well in several countries. Charging for one-time coffee cups also seems to be on the agenda. But the real solutions may not be top down but ...

... bottom up? Yes. Grassroots movements led the way on plastic bags, and have spawned others such as Refill, which emphasises reusing bottles, and A Plastic Planet, which urges plastic-free aisles in supermarkets. Popular culture remains hugely important: it's just possible that the British series The Blue Planet has changed attitudes overnight.

Photograph: Zakir Chowdhury/Barcroft Images/Barcroft Media

None committed to setting up plastic-free aisles – something the prime minister called for last week. Only two supermarkets, Aldi and the Co-op, were open about the amount of plastic packaging they put on to the market.



Using their data, and other publicly available market share information, environmental consultants Eunomia estimated that the top supermarkets are creating a plastic waste problem of more than 800,000 tonnes each year - well over half of all annual UK household plastic waste of 1.5m tonnes.



The 800,000 tonnes of waste from food and beverage products would fill enough large 10-yard skips to extend from London to Sydney, or cover the whole of Greater London to a depth of 2.5cm. The revelations will add to mounting public concern about the damage that plastic does to the natural world. The Guardian has already revealed the vertiginous growth in plastic production, and the heavy environmental toll it exacts.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guardian exclusives on plastics Composite: The Guardian





Dominic Hogg, chairman of Eunomia, said the figures could be higher. “The data reported for plastic packaging put on the market as a whole is an underestimate in our view,” said Hogg.

Supermarkets in the UK keep their plastic footprint secret with a confidentiality agreement signed with the agencies involved in the British recycling compliance scheme. It means the amount of plastic packaging created by each supermarket and the money they pay towards its recycling is kept out of the public domain.

One leading supermarket manager is calling for the whole system to be made more transparent and targeted to make the irresponsible producers pay more.

Iain Ferguson, head of sustainability at the Co-op, said Britain should adopt the French system of “bonus-malus”, where supermarkets are taxed more for using material which is not easily recyclable and less for sustainable and recyclable packaging.

“We need this to be much more transparent,” said Ferguson. “There should be a fiscal system that rewards good recyclability and penalises poor recyclability. We should be able to replicate it in some way in the UK.”

Ferguson added: “I don’t know why other supermarkets are not revealing their figures.”

Quick guide Plastics and our throwaway society Show Hide Why is plastic being demonised? Since the 1950s, 8.3bn tonnes of plastic has been produced. Plastic is seen as a versatile, indispensable product, but the environmental impact is becoming more stark. Plastic is now so pervasive that recycling systems cannot keep up and the leakage into the environment is such that by 2050 plastic in the ocean will outweigh fish. In 2017 scientists found plastic fibres in tap water, and plastic has been found in the stomachs of sea creatures in the deepest part of the ocean. Most plastic waste ends up in landfill sites or leaks into the natural environment, where it is causing huge damage to eco-systems on land and sea, creating near permanent contamination. According to academics in the United States, by 2015, of all the plastic waste generated since the 1950s, only 9% has been recycled, with 12% incinerated and 79% accumulated in landfill sites or the environment. Why are the supermarkets under fire? Producers of plastic include retailers, drinks companies and supermarkets. Supermarkets create more than half of the plastic waste in the household stream in the UK. But they refuse to reveal how much they put on to the streets and how much they pay towards recycling it. Supermarkets are under pressure to reduce their plastic packaging and campaigners argue they have the power to turn off the tap. Much of the packaging they sell to consumers is not recyclable: plastic film, black plastic trays, sleeves on drinks bottles and some coloured plastic. The Recycling Association and other experts believe supermarkets could do much more to make packaging 100% recyclable and reduce the use of plastic. Who pays to clean up the waste? The taxpayer, overwhelmingly. UK producers and retailers pay among the lowest towards recycling and dealing with their waste in Europe. In other countries, the “polluter” is forced to pay much more. In France, a sliding system of charges means those who put more non- recyclable material on the market pay more. What can shoppers do to help? Supermarkets are under pressure, not least from the prime minister, to create plastic-free aisles. A growing number of zero-waste shops are springing up and consumers are being encouraged to ask for products to be sold without plastic. Sandra Laville Photograph: ermingut/E+

Co-op, the UK’s sixth biggest grocer, has cut its plastic packaging by 44% in the last 10 years; from 78,492 tonnes in 2006 to 43,495 tonnes in 2016.

Ferguson said the supermarket had introduced key changes which others have followed. These include removing plastic lining from its tissue boxes, removing polystyrene bases for its pizzas and changing the punnets for tomatoes from plastic to cardboard.

Aldi’s plastic packaging has increased from 37,261 tonnes in 2013 to 64,000 tonnes in 2016. The store recycled 3,400 tonnes of plastic in 2016 – which amounts to just over 5% of the packaging waste it created.

A spokeswoman for Aldi said the increase in its plastic footprint coincided with a rapid expansion in the UK from 516 to 700 stores.



Iceland this week said it would eliminate plastic packaging on all its own-brand products within five years.

Former Asda chief executive Andy Clarke said recently supermarkets should not use any plastics for packaging. “It is vital that the UK packaging industry and supermarkets work together to turn off the tap,” he said.

Supermarkets in the UK pay less towards collecting and recycling their plastic waste than in any other European country – leaving taxpayers to pick up 90% of the bill – in a system which is shrouded in secrecy.



On average supermarkets and retailers pay £18 per tonne towards recycling, whereas in other European countries, businesses pay up to £133 per tonne for recycling, according to the figures provided to the Environmental Audit Committee. In Germany producers pay 100%.

The system, known as the producer responsibility scheme, was heavily criticised by MPs this month.

Louise Edge, senior oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said saving oceans from plastic contamination required transparency and cooperation from businesses.

“Reform of producer responsibility laws are key to that ... Under the current system, just 10% of the cost of packaging waste disposal is paid by business, with taxpayers left to pick up the rest of the bill.”



Supermarkets declare the amount of plastic packaging they use to Valpak, one of 28 commercial compliance companies, from which the amount they need to contribute towards recycling is calculated.

Adrian Hawkes, policy director of Valpak, which is used by most major supermarkets, confirmed the data was covered by a privacy agreement.

The Environment Agency – which acts as government regulator of the system - also adheres to the confidentiality agreement. A spokeswoman said the agency could not disclose figures of how much plastic packaging individual supermarkets were responsible for as a result.

The only information publicly available is aggregated data for all packaging materials on the National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD).

Hogg said: “The status quo is one of producer irresponsibility - packaging that’s unnecessarily wasteful, some that has no hope of being recycled, and too much being littered on land and sea.”

“If we had a system where producers were charged fees that were modulated to reflect their environmental impact – and where the fees covered the full costs of managing packaging we would influence the design of packaging and could specify high quality recycling infrastructure.”

Responses

The six supermarkets which refused to provide figures on how much plastic packaging they put onto the market annually referred the Guardian to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

The BRC said general packaging information was available on the NPWD.

The spokesperson said: “Retailers are continually innovating in relation to packaging and recyclability. Several BRC members have ambitious internal targets around recyclable packaging, and retailers, investing with their suppliers, are pioneering a number of initiatives that could make a significant difference to the recyclability of packaging and use of recycled material, if workable and adopted at scale.”

