UK Supermarket Sale of Loose Product Packaging

UK supermarkets have made limited progress in reducing plastic packaging for fresh fruit and vegetables and transparency on loose produce sales has worsened since EIA’s last comparable dataset in 2021.

While many grocery retailers have signed up to the UK Plastics Pact’s voluntary commitment to sell at least 30 per cent of uncut fresh produce loose by 2025, increasing to 50 per cent by 2030, most do not publish company-level quantitative data to demonstrate whether this target has been met.

With the exception of Morrisons, which continues to state that about 30 per cent of its fresh produce is sold loose, progress under voluntary commitments cannot be verified. Most major retailers, including Tesco and Sainsbury’s, do not publish figures on unpackaged produce at all.

In the absence of reliable reporting, EIA has reviewed publicly available company-level sustainability disclosures from 2020-25 and conducted in store spot checks at nine major UK supermarkets in 2026. This found that loose produce options remain limited, inconsistently displayed and routinely overshadowed by
packaged formats, with many items sold both loose and packaged and the packaged option more prominent.