Pret A Manger

SECTOR: Food and Drink

DATE JOINED GREEN500: April 2008

Background and Context:

Established in London in1986, fresh sandwich retail chain, Pret A Manger have long been strong advocates of responsible and sustainable business practices, and their commitment to reducing waste has shown them to be innovators in the sandwich business. Not only do they ensure all their packaging can be recycled, they were the first retailer in the 1990s to use cardboard sandwich boxes as opposed to the more usual plastic sandwich containers. Furthermore, they ensure that sustainability is topmost when developing any new packaging lines.

Recent packaging developments include:

Reducing the amount of material used in baguette bags and bloomer wraps, saving 8.27 tonnes of packaging material a year.
Swapping from plastic salad bowls to sustainable cardboard packaging, saving 7,000 kilos of plastic a year.

Pret’s ultimate aim is to ensure all their packaging is made from recycled materials or renewable sources and is 100% recyclable (currently 96% of their packaging lines are recyclable).