Young’s satisfies its 2020 packaging reduction targets ahead of schedule

Grimsby, United Kingdom-based supplier Young’s Seafood announced that it had met all of its 2020 packaging reduction commitments ahead of schedule, according to a 29 October press release.

The company committed back in 2018 to make significant cuts in its use of paper packaging, as well as reducing its plastic packaging by 10 percent and removing all black plastic by the end of this year. The 2020 commitments fit into Young’s broader strategy to ensure that 100 percent of its packaging is reusable, recyclable, and compostable by 2025.

Young’s said it has successfully removed over 170 metric tons (MT) of unnecessary paper packaging so far, and 300 MT of plastic packaging. It launched a large-scale initiative to review the packaging of its Simply Breaded and Chip Shop standard and extra-large product ranges to achieve its paper packaging reduction goals.

Meanwhile, to achieve its aims in the plastic packaging arena, which are associated with the UK’s Plastics Pact, the company conducting an entire product range review, auditing its own label in the process.

Young’s was able to eliminate over 40 MT of non-recyclable black plastic from its Gastro range “by moving to a recyclable paperboard tray, a medium it has used across its fish pie range for over 15 years,” it said. The firm also replaced 127 MT of other plastics with recyclable materials, including its Scampi bags.

The company attributes its success to an approach guided by five distinct components: redesign, remove, reduce, reuse, and recycle.

“We are hugely aware of our responsibility to bring great tasting seafood to the nation's table in a sustainable way and reducing our use of packaging is a vital part of this,” Young’s Head of Packaging Development Helen Nickells said in a press release. “The packaging reduction we have achieved to date, specifically our efforts across the Simply Breaded and Chip Shop ranges, has also allowed us to generate additional environmental benefits including taking 256 lorries of the roads and significantly reducing our carbon footprint.”

Nickells noted that the company’s sustainable packaging journey is ongoing.

“This is not the end of the road by any means, the results to-date are brilliant, but we must not lose site of the journey ahead. Our next course of action will be tackling functional films which are currently non-recyclable and a more complex material to replace. We are also well on our way to ensuring that all our branded paper packaging is from FSC or PEFC certified sources, which we anticipate to be completed by March 2021,” Nickells said.

Photo courtesy of Young's Seafood