A MASS unwrap will take place in a Leamington supermarket to highlight the excessive use of plastic packaging.
The event at Morrisons, on Saturday (July 13) between 1pm and 3pm, has been organised by campaign group Plastic Free Leamington and Warwick in co-operation with the Old Warwick Road supermarket.
Volunteers will help and encourage shoppers to tear off packaging from the goods they have bought to highlight how much plastic waste is created everyday, and to call on retailers and manufacturers to stop using it.
Campaign organiser Jo Lally said: “We hope to highlight the amount of unnecessary packaging particularly plastic retailers and manufacturers insist on wrapping everything in. We want to illuminate the scale of the problem in one small town, in a short window.”
After the two hours volunteers will help staff remove the packaging waste and recycle what they can.
Jo added: “It will be a really interesting experiment how much of the packaging is recyclable and how much will go to landfill.
“We are really grateful to Morrisons for supporting us and allowing us to do this.”
A similar event recently held at Sainsbury’s in Kenilworth was hailed a success after volunteers and shoppers filled over two trolleys with plastic.
Green Party county councillor Jonathan Chilvers praised the nationwide campaign.
He said “The mass unwrap is a great idea and shows that customers want change. Why should we and then the council be left to sort out supermarkets wasteful packaging?
“I encourage everyone to leave the packaging you don’t need at the till. Let the supermarket deal with it. When they have to pay to dispose of tonnes of extra plastic they will take action.”
He is also calling on council leaders to challenge manufacturing companies over the use of single plastic wrapping.
He added: “Supermarkets’ superfluous wrapping costs our councils hundreds of thousands of pounds to dispose of. I call on our council leaders to now publicly support residents to unwrap at our supermarket tills.”
Morrisons recently became the first supermarket chain to roll out plastic-free fruit and veg areas across its stores.
