The Head of Packaging and Design at Sainsbury’s, Stuart Lendrum, has said producers and retailers should be doing more to educate consumers about packaging and the role this plays in reducing waste.

The comments came at an event hosted by the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group (APSRG) entitled Packaging: Minimising environmental impact through the life-cycle.

Speaking at the event, Lendrum stated:“With regards to reducing waste, the very initial part of the supply chain right through to our stores and through homes, packaging plays a critical and important role, in terms of reducing food waste.
It is great that we are moving to vacuum packed products in fresh meat, fish and poultry as we are reducing waste, improving the life of the product… and improving the taste and texture of the product.”

However, he added that customer perception of such packaging is “relatively negative” meaning there is a challenge and a need to move that forward.

Meanwhile, Dick Searle, Chief Executive of the Packaging Federation stated that the supply chain had done a poor job in explaining the use of packaging to people and that more packaging would be needed in the future.

He said: “The impact of food and drink in the supply chain without packaging would be hugely greater. So packaging is a solution and not just for this challenge. If we want to feed the world and have food security then just what we need is a lot more packaging.”