Ella’s Kitchen has teamed up with Asda for a sustainability scheme to encourage people to recycle babyfood pouches from any brand.
The six-month initiative kicked off this week at 37 Asda stores across the UK, where shoppers can fill a freepost envelope with up to 15 plastic babyfood pouches of any kind, before posting them to TerraCycle to be turned into items such as benches and fence posts.
The partnership with Asda was “one of the first collaborations between a brand and retailer to offer a convenient solution for plastic packaging” said Ella’s, which has worked with TerraCycle since 2010 on its EllaCycle recycling programme. It has more than 400 drop-off points around the UK, and has so far saved almost 2.5 million pouches from landfill. Until now, it had been “the only recycling solution for all babyfood pouches in the UK” according Ella’s.
While plastic babyfood pouches were “great in so many ways”, they also presented a “big challenge” by not being accepted for recycling by local councils, said Mark Cuddigan, CEO of Ella’s Kitchen.
“We want to change this, and that’s why we’re proud to have partnered with Asda to offer a new way for parents and carers to recycle all of their babyfood pouches”.
Asda recently announced it had met its 2018 promise to remove 6,500 tonnes of plastic from its own brand packaging within a year. This marked a step towards the supermarket’s commitment to use less plastic and recycle more, moving towards making all packaging 100% recyclable by 2025.
Asda was “looking at all parts of the business for ways to reduce our plastic footprint, make what packaging we do need more recyclable and help our customers to dispose of their packaging in the right way” said the supermarket’s senior buying manager for the baby category, Raj Varma.
Ella’s and Asda are both members of the UK Plastics Pact, a collaborative initiative between grocery, government and NGOs to create a circular economy for plastics. Their partnership follows a raft of leading fmcg brands teaming up with TerraCycle. Pladis, Pringles, Mars Petcare, Walkers and KP Snacks are just some of those to have launched their own schemes with the recycling company.
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