Every year, we place over 750 million products onto the UK market, each one packaged to protect and maintain the highest levels of quality Warburtons is known for.
We recognise that we must take a responsible approach to how we package our products to minimise our impact on the planet. We want to ensure that we’re doing what’s right for the environment while continuing to deliver quality products that our customers expect from us.
Our packaging plays an important role in preserving our products to reduce food waste and protect them against risk of damage or contamination. We have to make sure any changes we make don’t have unintended consequences, which is why we want to take our time to get it right. We don’t have all the solutions yet, but we are continuously looking at ways to eliminate excessive packaging and ensure all our packaging is recyclable, progressively moving up the waste hierarchy.
Recycling Warburtons Packaging
We are proud to share that all Warburtons packaging is recyclable!
That’s right – everything from our bread bags to our wax wrapping and our bagels packs too. Check the back of pack to find out the best route to recycle, whether it’s at home, your local supermarket store, or through our partnership with TerraCycle®.
To find out more about recycling your packaging at front of store visit Recycle Now and search for plastic bags and wrapping. If you’d like to find out where you can recycle through the TerraCycle® scheme, or to become a Warburtons public drop-off location, visit the TerraCycle® website.
Improving Our Recyclability
Since 2023, we saved over 1000 tonnes of virgin plastic by continuing to add 30% pre-consumer recycled plastic into our bread bags. Over 65% of the plastics we use now contain recycled content.
We know that we still have a job to do in delivering long-term solutions to make recycling our packaging easier, which isn’t going to be easy. But rest assured we are committed to making the right long-term decisions and are working hard to make sure that we get it right.
We continue to work in partnership with our suppliers, industry bodies and government to develop and discuss packaging materials, share knowledge and support growth and progression in the industry.
Remove and Reduce
The infrastructure in the UK isn’t set up to support household collections of all packaging materials so they can be recycled or re-processed. Therefore, we need to work hard to reduce the packaging materials we put into market where possible, and reduce the possibility of our packaging going to landfill.
We are proud to have streamlined our Pancakes packaging, removing the equivalent 26 tonnes of plastic per year! We have also reduced the amount of plastic used in our Giant Crumpet trays by 38%, and they now contain 30% recycled content. And, we’ve reduced the use of plastic in our bread bags, saving 173 tonnes of plastic annually.
Innovating for the Future
We are working with our suppliers to develop new materials that provide the right level of protection for our products, but come with better environmental credentials. We have invested in trial machines at our Research & Innovation Centre that will help us to figure out what we can do in the future.
We’re also working on a number of other initiatives including: the simplification of our crumpet film materials to improve recyclability; a reduction in the size of our crumpet cards which will save approximately 11,000 trees over three years, and limiting ink use on our packaging to create a cleaner, less contaminated material when the packaging is recycled
Terracycle ®
We partner with innovative recycling company TerraCycle® to make recycling our packaging possible. TerraCycle® is the world’s leader in the collection and repurpose of hard-to-recycle waste.
