Colruyt is the first to introduce meat trays made from recycled plastic

Since last fall, Colruyt has been packaging fresh meat in trays made partly from old yogurt pots and foam trays. This makes it the first retailer in Belgium to reuse recycled polystyrene from chemical recycling as food packaging.

Less new raw materials needed

The plastic packaging material from collected yogurt pots and foam trays is processed in Indaver’s new Plastics2Chemicals plant in Antwerp. Using an advanced chemical recycling process, the company converts polystyrene packaging into recycled styrene. This raw material has the same properties as virgin material and can therefore also be used for food packaging. Since October, Colruyt’s dark gray foam trays have contained 10% of this recycled material, representing 66 tons recycled annually.

Ludo Vanderelst, purchasing manager at Colruyt Group: “In 2023, Colruyt was the first chain to move away from black foam trays, so that the empty packaging from the PMD bag could also be sorted correctly and thus recycled. Today, we are the first to reuse the recycled material from foam trays and yogurt pots in packaging. This means we need fewer and fewer new raw materials for our packaging and we are reducing our impact on the environment.”