This weekend, Sunday Times magazines in parts of South East of England will be wrapped with a recyclable paper band, replacing the existing inner plastic polybagging.
The Saturday Times magazine will follow next weekend.
News UK will roll out the recyclable paper band region by region, aiming by mid October, to have the banding phased into the titles across the UK and Ireland.
This comes as News UK pledge to remove all single-use plastic which wrap titles and inner magazines, to reduce their use from 800 tonnes to zero.
In June 2019 The Times and The Sunday Times replaced all single-use plastic using compostable alternatives, or in the case of supermarkets, completely removed them.
The titles have shined light on environmental causes with their ‘Clean Air for all’ campaign, championing climate charities such as Positive, they raised over £100,000 for the cause during their Christmas appeal.
The Sun TV Mag removed their inner plastic polybagging in October 2019, effectively removing 350 tonnes of single-use plastic per year. The Sun on Sunday phased out their use of single-use plastics by the end of December last year.
News UK Retail Director, Neil Spencer said: “Retailers and readers have responded overwhelmingly positively to our plastics pledge and this latest paper band innovation is an industry-leading effort. Our suppliers have put plastics at the centre of their sustainability drive, building on their work reducing emissions through efficiency drives and sourcing 100% of paper from sustainable forest management systems. The insert process after this move remains unchanged for retailers.”
The Times and Sunday Times General Manager, Michael Brunt said: “At The Times and The Sunday Times we don’t waste words and we won’t waste plastic. Over the past year we have reduced the plastics in our products to zero and continue to campaign for green issues through our award-winning journalism. It may not be top of the news agenda at the moment, but environmental sustainability remains an incredibly important issue and one we are proud to champion both in our titles and our supply chain.”
Readers and retailers can give feedback on the new paper banding by emailing growsales@news.co.uk.
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