McVitie’s owner Pladis has unveiled a three-pronged strategy to help improve the recyclability of its packaging, including extending its partnership with recycling firm TerraCycle.

As part of the strategy, the manufacturer has committed to the UK Plastics Pact, which was unveiled by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in April 2018.

By signing up to the Pact, Pladis is pledging to make all of plastic packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025.

It will also be extending its partnership with TerraCycle to include plastic packaging across all its brands. The scheme sees consumers send their wrappers to TerraCycle by freepost or drop them off at one of nearly 500 collection points across the country.

Flexible plastic wrappers, such as those on some of Pladis’ biscuits, are not collected as part of local council recycling collections.

“We’ll be working closely with industry partners to make all our plastic packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025,” said Scott Snell, customer vice president at Pladis UK & Ireland. “In the meantime, we want to make sure all our consumers have the opportunity to recycle their wrappers, which is why we’ve extended our TerraCycle partnership to our entire snacking range.”

To encourage customers to recycle packaging, Pladis will be improving labelling and joining the On-Pack Recycling Label scheme to ensure consumers are clear on how and where to recycle them.

“Pladis has been a valued partner of TerraCycle’s for a number of years now in the UK and Ireland. Firstly for the biscuit wrapper category and, more recently, it was great to see them expand the programme to cover the cracker and cake wrapper categories, which was well received by consumers,” added Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle.