Marks & Spencer Takes The Sustainable High Road

Marks & Spencer drives down the sustainability road in full throttle with the redesign of food packaging to cut down plastic usage and transport costs. The packaging of 140 branded snacks, such as popcorn and crisps, will be redesigned with thinner plastic and less air but with the same amount of food inside each pack.

The retail giant’s ‘Project Thin Air’ is scheduled to slash 75 tonnes of packaging per year, in other words, 152 lorries worth of plastic packaged goods. The chain’s best-selling popcorn’s packaging will shrink by 37% and their salt & vinegar crisps varieties by 20 %. Marks & Spencer’s packaging expert, Laura Fernandez says: “We’ve been working on this project for over a year and are really pleased with the results.”

“We very much see this as the start of a much bigger piece of work and hope to bring equally impressive savings to other areas of the business too.”

Ten years ago, M&S vowed to improve sustainability practices within the production chain, starting with fishing and all the way to fair trade chocolate. By 2012, it became the first retailer to become ‘carbon neutral’, recycling up to 100% of its waste. The retailer teamed up with Oxfam and actress Johanna Lumley to help change shopper perceptions and habits regarding recycling of second-hand clothes.