Tesco is launching a trial to remove a selection of plastic-wrapped fruit and vegetables in a bid to cut down on packaging waste.
From Monday 25 March, the UK supermarket will run its month-long pilot programme at two of its Extra stores, in Watford and Swindon.
The trial will see the company remove plastic packaging from 45 food products where loose alternatives are available.
The items include apples, onions, mushrooms, peppers, bananas and avocados.
The news comes a year after the supermarket chain announced it would ban hard-to-recycle plastic packaging by 2019 and make all packing full recyclable by 2025.
Sarah Bradbury, director of quality at Tesco, said: “We want to remove as much plastic as we can from our products, only using what is necessary to protect and preserve our food.
“We hope this trial proves popular with customers. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the results, including any impact on food waste.”
Tesco isn’t the only supermarket in the UK to focus its efforts on improving its environment impact in recent months.
In January, Morrisons announced it would raise the cost of its plastic bags to 15p and introduce a new paper version in a two-month trial aimed at reducing plastic use across the company.
The same month saw Marks & Spencer launch more than 90 lines of loose fruit and vegetables of plastic packages in a trial which also welcomed trained greengrocers in store to help customers.
In February, supermarket chain Iceland also announced its plans to bring back the traditional greengrocer with packaging-free food and vegetables as part of its efforts to eliminate plastic entirely by 2023.
According to a report in November 2018, Britain's top 10 supermarkets are flooding the planet with 810,000 tonnes of single-use plastic every year.
This is in addition to over 1.1 billion single-use bags, 958 million “bags for life” and 1.2 billion plastic bags for fruit and vegetables, reports the Checking Out on Plastics report by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace UK.
