Mars to change its wrapper from plastic to paper 

Mars bars presented a new look with recyclable paper wrappers instead of plastic.

It is part of a pilot, trialling better environmentally friendly items for Mars Food’s chocolates.

The new wrapper will be rolled out at 500 Tesco shops in the UK from Monday.

The action follows chocolate competitors Nestle, which has been using paper wrappers for Smarties since January 2021 and on some Quality Street sweets since December 2022.

Nine of 11 Quality Street classic sweets moved to paper-based wrappers. The Orange Crunch and the Green Triangle stayed in their foil packaging as these are recyclable already.

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Mars states that finding the correct paper wrapper solution with a “good level of barrier properties to save the chocolate” is challenging.

Mars’s current plastic packaging should be recyclable, as is the case for many things, including crisp packets and chocolate bar packaging. This leads to them gathering in landfill and degrading waters.

In the Philippines, which witnesses tonnes of single-use plastics wash up on its coasts, such packaging is repurposed to create bricks for buildings by being stuffed into bottles and stacked.

The RSPCA states that the issue with single-use plastic trash is that it does not break down and splits up into smaller and smaller areas, which will affect the environment and wildlife for multiple years in the future.