Tesco is urging the Government to introduce regulation to encourage a major shift towards reusable plastic packaging.
The supermarket insisted that ministers needed to take action to reverse the trend of recycling facilities shutting, The Grocer reported.
It cautioned that the war on plastic would not be successful unless a viable market was set up for reusable packaging.
It comes as the sector is due to introduce its new UK Packaging Pact in November, with a major sector swap towards a reuse packaging model forming one of its key objectives.
Speaking at the London Packaging Week conference last week, Tesco head of packaging James Bull argued that the pact faced huge challenges.
However, he said that it could work with the correct regulatory backdrop.
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“If you look back to 2018 and the launch of the Plastics Pact, back then the scale of the challenge and things like eliminating black plastic felt almost insurmountable,” he said.
“But we unlocked it by coming together and working as an industry.”
Despite a “long list” of obstacles facing the pact, Bull said that key industry players, such as the majority of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, were committed to a major decrease in single-use plastic.
He also argued that the UK currently did not have adequate incentives or sufficient recycling facilities.
Bull said: “We must make sure that legislation is designed in the right way to create these platforms at scale.
“Yes, there is a need for more recycled content but there also a need to make sure that the recycling industry is working effectively and efficiently and that there is a cash value for the material that they are working on.
“At the moment the story is one of recyclers closing, not opening.”
In August, it was reported that sales of plastic bags increased for the first time in a decade as a result of online shopping.
Ocado was named as the worst offender, with the online supermarket selling 221m plastic bags in 2024, marking a rise of 30m from 2023.
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