Australia’s biggest bread baker Tip Top is set to save almost 400 million plastic bread bag tags from landfills every year as it progressively rolls out tags made from 100-per-cent recycled cardboard.
The new tags were first introduced in South Australia last November and this month they are being rolled out into the country’s two most populous states, Victoria and New South Wales. After that, they will be phased in all over Australian states and across the Tasman, in New Zealand.
The cardboard bread tags are part of a broader company commitment to convert all of the company’s packaging to 100-per-cent recyclable, reusable or compostable materials by 2025 and help close the loop on waste.
Tip Top encourages its customers to dispose of the tags inside newspaper or cardboard inside their kerbside recycling bins to give them the best chance of being recycled into a new product rather than being sent to landfill.
Graeme Cutler, director of sales and CSR lead at Tip Top ANZ, says the company is taking the action “because it’s the right thing to do”.
“We want to be proactive, rather than wait for our customers to ask us to address our waste. And, when it comes to working together as a nation to eliminate single-use plastics, we want to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.”
Rebecca Gilling, deputy CEO of the Australian environmental organisation Planet Ark, says small pieces of plastic such as bread tags are problematic in recycling and waste streams.
“For this reason, Planet Ark is pleased to see Tip Top designing out waste by replacing plastic bread tags with a circular solution made from 100-per-cent recycled cardboard. When recycled correctly, the cardboard will be used again, closing the recycling loop and keeping resources in use.”
Cutler says sustainable bread tags are just the first of a series of packaging innovations under the company’s ‘Feeding Aussie families more sustainably’ vision, which includes addressing recycling confusion by updating packaging with the Australasian Recycling Label.
“It’s part of the bigger picture for us. Our goal is that by 2025, all Tip Top packaging will be 100 per cent recyclable, reusable, or compostable, to help us close the loop on waste.
