Waitrose & Partners has hit its target to remove black plastic from hundreds of products as part of its overall aim to eradicate the material from all its own label products.

The retailer has now removed the hard-to-recycle black plastic on its fresh meat, fish, poultry, fruit and veg – amounting to a reduction of over 1,300 tonnes of black plastic per annum.

The progress means the retailer is more than half-way to achieving its goal to remove black plastic on all its own label products by the end of 2019.

Tor Harris, Head of CSR, Health & Agriculture for Waitrose & Partners, said: “Eliminating black plastic is a priority for us. While removing it we have also taken the opportunity to reduce the amount of plastic of any colour by removing trays from fruit and veg like apples, broccoli and pak choi.

“We are making progress all the time and are determined to maintain our momentum which is why we’re now looking at ready meals and other products so we can achieve our aim of removing all black plastic from our own-label products by the end of 2019.”

A recent example of packaging innovation to eradicate the use of black plastic include the retailer’s Duchy organic tomato packaging which partly uses punnets made from tomato vines, which would otherwise have gone to waste, with recycled cardboard.