Back

The new trays are made from mixed coloured PET bottles and trays.

PET trays

Waitrose: Colour is the new black

1:50 min ColorantsPET materials
London, United Kingdom

Waitrose & Partners is launching coloured packaging made from recycled plastic for its ready meals. The new trays, made predominantly from mixed coloured PET bottles and trays, means the packaging may be a different colour every time it is produced, depending on what is being recycled.

From pink and red tones, to shades of green and blue, the new packaging is unlikely to be the same twice, meaning customers could buy their ready meal in a different colour tray every time they shop.  
The 'multi coloured swap' allows Waitrose to ensure that its trays are more widely recyclable while  it continues to replace single use plastic. The retailer recently launched the world’s first home compostable packaging for its Italian ready meals replacing black plastic with a fibre-based tray.

This packaging innovation, produced for Waitrose by Faerch, will see even more ready meals taken out of hard-to-recycle black plastic, saving a further 500 tonnes of black plastic going to landfill. 

Waitrose has already eliminated black plastic on its fresh meat, fish, poultry, fruit and veg;  and this new packaging helps Waitrose move closer to removing all black plastic by the end of the year.  

The majority of black plastic packaging is coloured using carbon black pigments which do not enable the pack to be easily sorted by the systems widely used in plastics recycling. As a result, black plastic packaging can commonly end up as residue and disposed of in landfill. 

Karen Graley, Packaging Manager, Waitrose & Partners, says: “This is an exciting example of packaging innovation that helps us move even more ready meals out of hard-to-recycle black plastic into a rainbow of recycled content that can be recycled again and again.”

www.waitrose.com 

PETnology's Resource Guide
comPETence center

The comPETence center provides your organisation with a dynamic, cost effective way to promote your products and services.

Find out more

Cover
Our premium articles
comPETence
magazine

Find our premium articles, interviews, reports and more
in 3 issues in 2023.

Find out more
Current issue