Calling for supermarkets to remove fruit & veg plastic packaging

Since starting Everyday Plastic almost 5 years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to have lots of conversations with lots of people. What’s interesting when having these conversations is how frequently certain topics and questions come up. What happens to our recycling? How the heck do I live without plastic? What is the government doing?!

There is one theme that has been consistent whether I’m talking to primary school kids, a local community group or senior execs at a major corporate: there is too much plastic packaging on our fruit & veg.

Back in 2022, The Big Plastic Count revealed that over 1m pieces of fruit & veg packaging were thrown away by nearly 100,000 households across the UK in one week. Averaging over 10 bits of fruit & veg packaging per household per week, If household averages were typical of every home in the UK, almost 300m pieces of plastic fruit & veg packaging would be thrown away each week – equivalent to around 14bn pieces per year. 

Something needs to be done.

We’ve launched our #ChooseLoose campaign calling for supermarkets to remove plastic packaging from five top-selling fruit & veg products: potatoes, apples, bananas, carrots and onions.

These products also happen to be the top five most wasted fruit & veg products in UK households. Over a one-year period, it is estimated that selling these five items loose would:

🗑 Prevent an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic packaging from being thrown away

❌ Avoid over 77,000 tonnes of food waste by allowing people to buy the exact amount they need

💰 Save shoppers a combined total of over £85m in uneaten food

The benefits are real and realistic.

But why should you decide to #ChooseLoose? What does it mean for you?

1️⃣ You can choose your own. You get to decide on the size and condition of your fruit & veg – big or small, muddy or clean, straight or wonky – to meet your personal requirements or standards.

2️⃣ You can choose how many or how much. By buying the exact quantity of fruit & veg you need, you will genuinely save money and prevent food waste. What would that look like over a year?

3️⃣ To choose loose means you can personally reduce the unnecessary, often hard-to-recycle, plastic packaging waste that ends up in your bin.

We know that it’s not always easy to choose loose. Often the loose products aren’t available or affordable – and that’s a big portion of the problem.

Our petition has had over 15,000 within the first 4 days. It is clear that selling loose fruit & veg is not only what we need, but also what we want. 

Our Choose Loose campaign is more than a petition, though. We want to encourage supermarkets to go beyond long-term planning and voluntary commitments and to take urgent action. We’ll work with supermarkets and shoppers to understand what the barriers and challenges are to choosing loose and develop robust communications to address them.

Potatoes, apples, bananas, carrots and onions are often available loose in supermarkets alongside their packaged counterparts. We want them loose, and only loose. It’s time.