Sandwiches in 100% compostable packaging to be sold at Glastonbury Festival

The sandwiches will be sold at a pop-up store run by the British food retailer Co-op at the festival, which begins Wednesday.”All components of the packaging for these sandwiches, the base card, the film and the label, are compostable,” Co-op said in a statement sent to CNN. Compost waste bins will be available at the festival, Co-op said, while the pop-up store will also offer recyclable aluminum cans of water, refillable water bottles and compostable carrier bags. Co-op has pledged to no longer sell “hard to recycle” own brand plastic packaging and products by 2023. Breige Donaghy, food director at Co-op, said: “It’s a priority to find new ways to reduce plastic packaging. We’ve successfully unveiled compostable carrier bags but it’s difficult to replace plastic packaging for sandwiches and keep the product fresh. These sandwiches have two days shelf life from the moment they are made and we have to deliver directly to the store.” Glastonbury was an ideal setting to test the new technology, Donaghy added.In February, Glastonbury announced a ban on the sale of single-use plastic bottles. Headlined by Stormzy, The Killers and The Cure, this year’s festival will also prohibit single-use bottles in the backstage, dressing room, catering and production areas. Co-organizer Emily Eavis said in a statement, “It’s paramount for our planet that we all reduce our plastic consumption, and I’m thrilled that, together, we’ll be able to prevent over a million single-use plastic bottles from being used at this year’s festival.”Amid growing worldwide concern over plastic pollution, the UK government has joined a number of others in announcing bans on some single-use plastics. Its prohibition of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds will go into effect in April 2020, while the EU parliament has voted to implement a bloc-wide ban on plastic cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers from 2021.Environmental organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have called for a global ban on all single-use plastics by 2025.