This is the biggest area we are working on at the moment, and the hardest one to get right. Our current dry food packaging falls under recycling code 7, which is not recycled in home-recycling in the majority of UK local authorities.

‘Recyclable’ plastic packaging: Some other pet food brands say ‘recyclable’ on plastic packaging. This tends to be PE/PE monostructure packaging. Whilst technically-speaking this is recyclable there will be a note on the back explaining that it is not recyclable in-home recycling, and needs to be taken to a supermarket to be recycled in their carrier bag recycling programme. We are looking for a better route, as we think there is a potential problem with these bags contaminating home-recycling and very few people actually take them to the supermarket (many of which don’t actually have carrier bag recycling programmes). There is a small chance that local authorities will move to recycling this type of monostructure packaging and if they do it is something we will look at again, but that feels like it’s a long way off at the moment. The local authorities are already struggling to recycle the materials that they say they can.

Biodegradable packaging: ‘Biodegradable’ is a claim that we see on some packaging. This is rife with problems; Mostly this is industrially biodegradable packaging, not home-compostable, and the empty packs rarely make it to an industrial biodegrading plant. More often than not they get added to home-recycling, which contaminates the recycling. Some people may add to their food waste collections (if they have them) and this would be considered contamination by many local authorities. The other big problem is that these are often made food products like corn, we think it’s better to get food to people (and animals) that need food, rather than use it as packaging. Growing more crops also means more land used for crops, which means less bio-diversity and higher use of pesticides.