Morrisons has announced it is removing black plastic from all of its own-brand food and drink packaging to make it more easily recyclable.

Removing black plastic from its own brands will make almost 4,000 tonnes of packaging more easily recyclable – the equivalent of 7.4 per cent of the plastics used at Morrisons each year – the retailer said.

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Black plastic is hard to recycle because it is coloured using carbon black pigments which mean it is invisible to sorting equipment at recycling facilities and tends to end up in landfill or being incinerated.

The shift includes the supermarket’s ready meal range, which has moved from black packaging to a recyclable plastic which contains 85 per cent recycled content, Morrisons said.

Natasha Cook, packaging manager at Morrisons, said: “It’s important to our customers that we make it easier to recycle plastic and so we are very pleased to announce that we’ve been able to eliminate black plastic from our own-brand products.”

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Morrisons claims to be the first retailer to announce the complete removal of black plastic from all of its own-brand food and drink packaging.

And it says its commitments have already removed 9,000 tonnes of unnecessary or problematic plastic each year, including plastic produce bags in fruit and veg aisles and unrecyclable polystyrene from food and drink products.