The move will help reduce plastic waste in their stores!
Jumping on the sustainability wagon after a successful trial in a Southampton store, M&S is now introducing a ‘fill your own’ container station in their Manchester city centre store – an incredible move towards reducing plastic waste in the UK.
The scheme will roll out in Manchester’s St Mary’s Gate store, allowing customers to bring in their own reusable containers to fill up on dried goods such as rice, porridge and more, with M&S yet to officially announce the product list.
The Southampton store offers 44 products to fill up on as you need, with confectionery, cereals, coffee, pasta and many more essentials available. According to M&S, 25 out of 44 products available in the ‘fill your own’ range outsold the packaged products, with consumers looking for more environmentally friendly options when shopping.
New research untaken by YouGov revealed that over 75% of shoppers are consciously trying to reduce their use of plastic packaging and to help consumers make the switch, M&S are offering better value per gram when customers use the refillable service, with free, recyclable paper bags available for shoppers without containers to use while they adapt to the new concept.
Paul Willgoss, Director of Food Technology at M&S, commented:
“Our Fill Your Own concept is one area we’re focusing on as part of our action to reduce plastic packaging and support our customers to reuse and recycle. As a completely new way of shopping, we’re keen to better understand refill across the entire store process from behind the scenes operations to working together with our customers to encourage behaviour change.”
A date for the ‘Fill Your Own’ service is yet to be revealed for the Manchester store, however, shoppers can expect to see the new product offering pop up in-store sometime in the coming weeks.