M&S announces pioneering local authority recycling partnerships
Marks & Spencer has announced four pioneering partnerships with local authorities around the UK to significantly improve kerbside recycling, enabling councils to collect an additional 60,000 tonnes of recyclable material from six million people every year by 2015.
As part of its eco-plan Plan A, M&S will invest £1.25 million over five years in the first partnership with Somerset County Council’s Waste Partnership – enabling the council to add plastics and cardboard to the materials it collects from homes across its five district councils.
Three other similar partnerships are set to be announced later in the year, including Kent Waste Partnership which is in advanced talks with M&S.
These partnerships mark a significant step in delivering ‘closed loop’ recycling as they will ensure that every year approximately 15,000 tonnes of packaging waste will be diverted back into food packaging and reused by M&S. The remaining 45,000 tonnes will be sold to other packaging producers.
Dr. Helene Roberts, Marks & Spencer’s Head of Packaging, says: “This is a pioneering project that we believe will change the face of recycling in the UK. “Since the launch of Plan A in 2007 we’ve been on a journey to make our packaging more sustainable. We’ve achieved a 16 per cent reduction in food packaging and over 90% is now recyclable. In order that we move to the next level, which is making more of our packaging with recycled content, we need more materials at a higher quality collected at the kerbside and made available to our suppliers.
“We are tackling this problem by providing funding directly to the people that can make a difference – local authorities. These partnerships mean that we will get the materials we need to close the recycling loop and a deliver a more sustainable future for food packaging.”
