The confectionery maker Mars Incorporated is trialing recyclable paper packaging for a limited time, with the bars available at 500 Tesco stores from Monday (29).
The company is looking to explore different types of packaging, and how these work in everyday life. It added it would use the feedback to inform future packaging pilots, The Guardian reported.
Mars said it was “exploring different types of alternative packaging solutions” for its confectionery products.
Richard Sutherland-Moore, a packaging expert at Mars Wrigley UK’s research and development centre, said: “For Mars bar, the challenge was to find the right paper packaging solution with an adequate level of barrier properties to protect the chocolate whilst guaranteeing the food safety, quality and integrity of the product to prevent food waste.”
Mars said it is investing hundreds of millions of pounds to redesign thousands of types of packaging, and meet its goal of reducing the use of virgin plastics by a quarter in the short-term, while also increasing its use of recycled plastic in its packaging.
In May 2021, Mars launched its Flexible Plastic Fund, a £1mn initiative to start rolling out plastic recycling collection points in stores around the UK.
Mars follows a similar move by Quality Street to ditch its traditional foil and plastic wrappers for recyclable paper before last Christmas. The change, made by the brand owner, Nestlé, marked the end of shiny plastic wrappers for the first time since its launch in 1936, in favour of a kind of packaging collected by most local authorities for nine of its 11 sweets.
At the same time, Nestlé also announced it was switching KitKat wrappers to 80 per cent recycled plastic, allowing them to be recycled at supermarkets across the UK or put in household recycling in Ireland.
Confectionery group Perfetti Van Melle has also joined the UK Plastics Pact, aiming to drive key change on tackling pollution and improving environmental performance. The pact has stated that it is targeting the removal of single-use plastic, as well as making 100 per cent of plastic packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable, therefore keeping it in the economy in a sustainable manner across the complete value chain of industry.
