British Co-op Onions Now Come in Recyclable Packaging

Only yesterday, UK's Co-operative Food (Co-op, for short), the country's fifth biggest food retailer, made it public news that the onions sold under this brand will no longer come in your not-so-environmentally-friendly plastic bags, but will be made available for sale in packaging made from recyclable materials.

According to their official account of the effects this change in policies will have on the environment, selling onions all wrapped up in an eco manner will translate in about 32 tonnes of packaging being recycled on a yearly basis, rather than just have this many bags end up in landfill.

Business Green informs us that, previously to deciding that the time has come to make the onions they sell more environmentally friendly, the Co-operative Group took part in other similar projects, which were also aimed at diminishing the ecological footprint of the country's food industry.

Thus, former campaigns targeted wine bottles and soft fruit packaging, both of which were made to be more green-oriented either by cutting down on their weight, or by giving up on the use of plastic lids, respectively.

The Group's official website quotes Iain Ferguson, Co-op's manager for environmental issues, who supposedly argued how, “The Co-operative is leading the way in providing customers with recyclable packaging. We know our customers are keen to protect the environment and, in addition, we are also working to label all our recyclable product lines to make it as easy as possible for our customers to recycle.”

Apparently, the fact that this Group's own-brand onions will from now on be packed in environmentally friendly bags allows Co-op to “decorate” them with the On-Pack Recycling Label, as a sign that WRAP (UK's Waste and Resources Action Programme) fully supports this endeavor.

Just for the record, it seems that in Ancient Egypt onions were regarded as a symbol of eternal life due to their circle-within-a-circle structure, and therefore worshiped as some sort of sacred vegetable.