Less plastic than supermarkets

Introduction

Riverford only use packaging when it’s strictly necessary to prevent food waste, and we’re always finding ways to use less. Over the last six months, we’ve been working particularly closely on our use of plastics. Although a necessary evil in some cases (without it, moist, leafy veg quickly dehydrate and wilt), we have reduced our plastic packaging wherever possible, and sourced innovative alternative solutions that still fit the products’ needs.

To see how we’re progressing after extensive research and innovation, we decided to run a comparable packaging test with the leading UK supermarkets. As we’re most well-known for our veg boxes, we decided to compare our 3 most popular boxes (seasonal organic - small, seasonal organic - medium, quick organic - medium) to comparable packaged supermarket products.

The packaging in each box was weighed every week for four weeks from October 15th (to November 5th), and compared against the same products from Morrisons, Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Asda. As our box contents change every week, take a look at the products that were compared in the table below:

*As cime di rapa was unavailable in any of the supermarkets, we have discounted it from the study.

Method

In total, the packaging of 30 Riverford products was compared to the supermarket equivalent. We went to each supermarket and brought organic, comparable produce where possible. It’s important to note that we didn’t select items from the supermarkets that were excessively packaged; we simply compared organic where possible, in the same weights.

We removed the packaging intact and retained it for weighing, made sure that any other materials such as cardboard were removed, and then weighed the plastic.

Here are the results

Conclusions

Riverford’s veg boxes contain 82% less plastic than equivalent packaged products from major UK supermarkets*.

Riverford had the lowest total plastic weight each week compared to all supermarkets. There wasn’t much difference in the weight of plastic packaging across the different supermarkets; the lowest average per week was Sainsburys with 30.86g, and the highest was Asda with 41.22g.

The average amount of plastic used by supermarkets has increased since our previous study, rising from 31.13g to 36.67g.

Disclaimer

*Less plastic collectively by weight when we compared the contents of our 3 most popular boxes to the comparable, like for like, packaged produce purchased from 7 major UK supermarkets: Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Aldi, Morrisons and Waitrose. Please note, box contents change every week and can vary in packaging weight, but we will be running this test every quarter for consistency. The box testing was carried out from 15th October through to the 5th November 2018.