Evolving our packaging
Effective packaging is very important to ensure our products reach consumers in perfect condition. It plays a crucial role in ensuring food safety and avoiding food waste but it also has an environmental impact.
We are evolving our packaging to reduce its environmental impacts, constantly working with our suppliers to trying to cut down on plastic and enable recycling. This includes light-weighting, exploring different materials and designing packaging that can be recycled.
Developing new packaging requires innovative, technical approaches that balance the need for functionality with the drive for environmentally- friendly materials. It is crucial that we do not reduce shelf-life of products or increase food waste, which has the largest environmental impact of the entire food supply chain and is a major contributor to climate change.
What are we doing?
We’ve reduced the average annual weight of plastic packaging going to market by 637 tonnes since 2009 for our ready-to-heat pouches and by 27 tonnes across the rest of our packaging since 2017.
We’ve committed to making 100% of our packaging recycle-ready in time for kerbside collection in 2027, although we would prefer for this to happen sooner.
We’ve already transitioned the packaging of some of our products to a recycle-ready mono laminate and more products will follow to ensure all our packaging can be recycled through kerbside collection
Where can you recycle our packaging?
Consumers can return the flexible/soft plastic packaging used for Tilda dry rice for recycling via collection points at many of the larger supermarkets. Unfortunately, these collection points do not yet accept pouches for Tilda ready-to-heat rice.
To find collection points at a store near you visit:
Some Local Authorities have started pilot projects to collect flexible /soft plastic packaging via household collections with the support of the Flexible Plastic Fund, to which Tilda contributes
Household collections — Flexible Plastic Fund
As signatory to The UK Plastics Pact, we are exploring other avenues with our partners to meet the commitments: 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable
For more information on how we are evolving our packaging, please read our 2022 Impact Report.