War on Waste - Food packaging study

The UK generates around 25 million tonnes of household waste per year, much of this ends up in landfill. As part of the LGA ‘War on Waste’ campaign, LGA Analysis and Research commissioned BMRB social research to undertake an ongoing study of food packaging.

The third wave of this study investigated the food packaging levels and composition on 29 common food items in the following retail outlets:

• ASDA
• Co-op 
• Lidl
• Marks and Spencer
• Morrisons
• Sainsbury’s
• Tesco
• Waitrose

Key findings from the third wave:

• 5% of the weight of the shopping baskets were made up of packaging
• The average weight of packaging in a basket was 727 grams, but this ranged from 645.5g for the basket of items from Tesco to 802.5g for Waitrose’s basket
• The proportion of waste packaging that was recyclable ranged from 57.8% in Lidl's basket to 66.8% in the baskets from Sainsburys

Weight of packaging and proportion of packaging that was recyclable, by retailer (Third wave) 

Further information: 

War on Waste food packaging study - Wave 3: Full Report (PDF, 58 pages, 1592KB)

War on Waste food packaging study - Wave 3: Summary  (PDF, 16 pages, 898KB)

Reports from the first two waves: 

War on waste food packaging study -  Wave 2: Summary Report (PDF, 15 pages, 937KB)

War on waste food packaging study - Wave 2: Full Report (PDF, 117 pages, 2396KB) 

War on waste food packaging study - Wave 1: Summary Report (PDF, 15 pages, 1081KB) 

War on waste food packaging study - Wave 1: Full Report (PDF, 103 pages, 2332KB)

Contact: 

Thomas Hulbert

Thomas.hulbert@lga.gov.uk

Telephone: 020 7664 3269