Retailer M&S will give people a 25p discount if they bring their own container to its fresh food-to-go Market Place counters.
M&S is hoping to change consumer behaviour through the reuse scheme and reduce the amount of disposable packaging that is used.Over 70,000 people use the M&S Market Place concept, which offers a variety of hot and cold lunch food-to-go option in 23 busy city centre stores.
M&S director of food technology Paul Willgoss said: “Our priority is to reduce single-use packaging and ensure any we do use can be reused or recycled, as we work towards our 2022 target for all our packaging to be widely recyclable.
“Food-to-go is a growing market, so finding solutions in this space is an important part of our wider plan. Our Market Place containers are already widely recyclable, but we want to go a step further with the introduction of an incentive to encourage customers to switch to reusable containers.”
M&S already offers a 25p incentive for hot drinks served in reusable coffee cups. This was introduced in April 2018.
As part of its plastic reduction plan, M&S has already removed 1,000 tonnes of plastic packaging from across its business and is working to ensure all its packaging is widely recyclable by 2022.
This week M&S has launched a new, widely recyclable terracotta CPET tray to replace black plastic, starting in its Italian ready meals range.
The retailer has pledged to completely remove all black plastic from its Food business by the end of 2020.
