Nestlé Confectionery says, in a category first, Quality Street will move to recyclable paper packaging for its twist-wrapped sweets and KitKat will introduce wrappers made with 80% recycled plastic.
By replacing the double layer of foil and cellulose with a paper wrap, Quality Street will remove more than two billion pieces of packaging material from the brand’s supply chain, Nestlé Confectionery says.
The new KitKat wrappers can be recycled at more than 5,000 supermarkets across the UK – and placed in household recycling in the Republic of Ireland. The rollout will begin this month on the brand’s flagship two-finger products, before being extended across the entire range by 2024.
Nestlé Confectionery says KitKat will use the highest proportion of recycled food-grade plastic of any major UK & Ireland confectionery brand. The launch is part of Nestlé’s “ongoing commitment” toward reducing its environmental impact and supporting a circular economy.
This commitment is further demonstrated by the new Quality Street wrappers, Nestlé Confectionery says, which were developed by packaging experts at Nestlé’s research and development centre in York. One “innovation” is the development of a special vegetable-based coating for the paper, which Nestlé Confectionery says does not hinder the recycling process.
Nestlé Confectionery is taking a leadership position on packaging sustainability as we work towards reducing our use of virgin plastic.
Nine of the 11 Quality Street sweets will move to paper-based packaging. The Orange Crunch and the Green Triangle will remain in their simple foil wrappers as, traditionally, they have not had cellulose wrappers.
The transition to paper, which is now underway, will take several months to complete. Nestlé Confectionery says this means that for Christmas 2022, consumers will find a mix of both the old and new wrappers in their Quality Street cartons, pouches, tubs, and tins. The delicious mix of sweets inside is unchanged.
Quality Street is the second Nestlé confectionery brand to introduce paper, following Smarties, which rolled out recyclable paper packaging for all its confectionery products globally in 2021.
The new KitKat packs will feature the Recycle At Store On-Pack Recycling Label (OPRL) – a UK labelling scheme established by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) to help consumers correctly reuse and recycle more material.
The wrappers will also provide information about the Recycling Locator Tool – a platform launched by the national WRAP recycling campaign Recycle Now, which guides consumers to their nearest recycling point.
The changes we are announcing today have been informed by detailed lifecycle assessments.
Business Executive Officer, Nestlé Confectionery, Richard Watson, said: “The new KitKat packaging is enabled by a significant upgrade to Nestlé’s York Factory, while the category-leading Quality Street paper twist-wraps have been designed at our Confectionery Product Technology Centre in York, and implemented in Halifax, the home of Quality Street for 87 years.
“Nestlé Confectionery is taking a leadership position on packaging sustainability as we work towards reducing our use of virgin plastic by one-third and making all our packaging recyclable or reusable within the next three years.
“The changes we are announcing today have been informed by detailed lifecycle assessments that have enabled us to identify solutions with a lower environmental impact than our current packaging.”