Marks & Spencer has claimed to be the first major retailer to launch a reusable container incentive for fresh food to go at its Market Place counters.
The initiative, launched today, forms part of its drive to reduce single-use packaging.
The scheme will offer customers who bring their own reusable containers a 25p discount off each meal in the 23 stores where the Market Place concept is available, including London Pantheon on Oxford Street, Newcastle, Norwich and Manchester.
Customers can also buy a range of different reusable containers from M&S, from £4.
The scheme follows M&S’s 25p-off incentive for hot drinks served in reusable coffee cups, which it launched in April 2018.
The Market Place format offers a variety of lunch-to-go options, including rotisserie chicken, fish and freshly prepared salads.
M&S said more than 70,000 people bought lunch from Market Place each week.
It said it was keen to encourage a change in consumer behaviour and reduce use of disposables – especially with IGD research showing that the food-to-go sector was poised to grow 26.4% by 2024.
M&S has also rolled out its ‘plastic take-back’ scheme to 11 stores. This enables customers to bring back any hard-to-recycle plastic such as black plastic, films and foils from any retailer.
M&S turns the collected plastic into playground equipment and prevents it from going to landfill. It plans to roll the scheme out further this year.
Paul Willgoss, director of food technology at M&S, said the priority was to reduce single-use packaging and ensure any it did use could be reused or recycled as the group worked towards its 2022 target for all its 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,” he said. “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.”
Trewin Restorick, chief executive and founder of environmental charity Hubbub, said: “People are rightly concerned about the environmental impact of single-use packaging.
“It is massively encouraging to see M&S become the first major retailer to offer customers a financial saving encouraging them to make an important change to their shopping habits. We hope customers will respond positively and other retailers will follow this lead.”
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