Plastic Peanut Butter Jars Cut Sainsbury's Packaging

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September 27, 2011

Sainsbury's has replaced the glass used in its store brands peanut butter jars with plastic, cutting packaging by 83 percent or 882,000 kilos (1.94 million pounds).

The change is the first of its kind by a U.K. retailer and puts Sainsbury's well on its way to meeting its target to cut total packaging by a third by 2015.

The reduced weight of the jars also means they require less fuel to transport, which the grocer said could reduce its carbon emissions by more than 150 tons.

"We have the most ambitious packaging reduction target in the industry and meeting it will require hundreds of initiatives such as this,” said Stuart Lendrum, Sainsbury's head of packaging. "Our work on peanut butter is a great example of how you can reduce packaging without sacrificing its effectiveness. In fact, the new jars will be less prone to breaking making them even better than the previous ones. Excess packaging is one of the top concerns among customers, so it is a real priority for us. It is vital that we strike the correct balance between ensuring packaging is functional and reducing the volume we use."

Sainsbury's has cut packaging levels by 12 million kilos (26.4 million pounds) over the past year, meaning around 7 percent of packaging has been removed from Sainsbury's store brands products through new packaging design. That equates to an 11 percent reduction over the past two years, the company reported.

Sainsbury's has made hundreds of changes to its packaging over the past year. Taste the Difference ready meals for example, have had the size of their outer sleeves reduced by 45 percent, leading to a saving of more than 5.5 million kilos (12.1 million pounds) of cardboard each year.

Other packaging changes that have contributed to the 12 million kilo (16.4 million pound total) total include:

• Introducing heat-seal lids on soft fruit lines;
• Reducing Easter egg packaging by 57 percent since 2008;Removing the cartons from canned Ventresca tuna fillets, reducing the packaging by 20 percent; and
• Reducing the cardboard on pizza base mix, saving 87 percent of packaging.

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