Walkers, a British snack food company, will test crisp packets made of recycled plastic bags and biscuit wrappers this year.
Today, the US parent company PepsiCo announced that the trial will be in the form of Walkers Crisps. It is expected to debut on shelves by 2022.
Walkers – famously faced by ex-England footballer Gary Lineker – fills 11 million crisp bags a day (7,000 a minute) at its Leicester factory.
After the snacks are eaten, the containers become a source for persistent litter that is thrown on the ground. This can threaten wildlife and spread toxins.
Packets made of layers of aluminum and polypropylene cannot be recycled so should be burnt, buried or burned in the landfill. It can take up to 100 years for them to break down.
PepsiCo, which owns UK brands including Walkers crisps, has announced plans to use 100 per cent recycled or renewable content in all crisp and snack packets by 2030
PepsiCo plans to make all its snack and crisp packs 100 percent recycled by 2030.
By switching entirely to recycled material, it estimates that they could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions up to 40%.
PepsiCo claims that by 2030, all snacks and crackers will contain 100 percent recycled or renewable materials.
Virgin plastic is the opposite to recycled plastic. It’s a plastic resin made from new materials that was created entirely without using recycled material.
‘This announcement and our UK trial are exciting and important moments on our journey towards a truly circular economy for flexible plastics,’ said Archana Jagannathan, senior director for sustainability at PepsiCo Europe.
‘We know change is needed to reduce the amount of virgin fossil-based plastic used in our packaging, which is why we’re working with partners across the value chain to develop effective, scalable solutions to address this.’
The recycled packaging range, to be trialled this year, will be derived from previously used plastic, including crisp packets, biscuit wrappers and shopping bags.
PepsiCo projects that it could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions up to 40% by completely switching to recycled packaging materials
This bag will have a higher percentage of recycled plastics such as polypropylene. Polypropylene is well-known for being used in strong products like car bumpers and lab equipment.
Eventually, all Walkers snacks and crisps will move to packaging designed to make them even easier to recycle by ‘leveraging innovative design technology’, according to PepsiCo – but it’s yet to specify what exactly this involves.
Walkers says it’s already been working to reduce unnecessary packaging; it has reduced some of its multipack outer packaging by up to 30 per cent and begun to replace plastic secondary large multipack bags with cardboard boxes.
PepsiCo is also urging the government to include flexible packaging, like crisp packets, sweet wrappers and ready meal films – in household recycling collections.
‘We need to make it easier for people to recycle their flexible plastics so that we can put this plastic back into the system and to good use,’ said Jagannathan.
“The retailers and the food industry have made this possible with more than 3,500 flexible plastic collections at supermarkets throughout the country. This makes it easy for customers to bring their recyclable packaging to recycling while they shop.
‘Now, we’re urging the government to speed up their plans to introduce kerbside recycling collections, so that we can begin recycling flexible plastics at scale.’
PepsiCo UK’s brands consist of Walkers. Quavers. Wotsits. Snack a Jacks. Pipers.
Pepsi MAX, 7Up Free, Tropicana, and other PepsiCo ready to-drink beverages will all be available in plastic bottles, excluding caps and labels, by the end 2012, according to the company.
PepsiCo, according to an analysis published in 2013, is one of most prolific global offenders when it comes the use of virgin material.
According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, only 5 percent of plastic packaging in the UK has recycled content by 2020. This is up from 4% in 2019 and 2% in 2018.
According to the charity, global usage of “virgin” plastics by large brands around the globe has reached its peak, and it is expected that this number will drop significantly by 2025.