TESCO has reduced the amount of plastic used in its large toilet roll multipacks thanks to a new way of winding the toilet paper more tightly onto cardboard tubes.
The supermarket said that it will save 67 tonnes of plastic packaging each year as a result of either fitting more paper onto each roll or winding rolls more tightly so they take up less space.
It added that its 24-roll own-brand pack of toilet rolls – which it describes as one of its ‘bulkiest’ products – shrunk ‘significantly’ in size when replaced with the new 12 pack of ‘double rolls’, which have twice the number of sheets wound to them.
Further to this, the reduction in size will mean 17 fewer lorries are needed each week to transport the rolls from the supplier to Tesco’s distribution centres – with Tesco revealing that the lorries will be redeployed to deliver other products in the run up to Christmas.
Katie Frost, buying manager paper at Tesco, said, “As well as removing unnecessary plastic, reducing the size of multipacks will free up valuable space in our lorries that can be put to great use this Christmas.
“We are looking at a number of ways to use less packaging as a part of our 4Rs packaging strategy. In the last few years, we have cut six thousand tonnes of packaging from products, including a billion pieces of plastic.”
