The Confederation of Paper Industries has warned that using plastic trays to distribute fresh produce rather than corrugated may have more negative impact on the environment in the form of higher transport costs. Andrew Barnetson of the Confederation of Paper Industries said: “With corrugated, you have the ability to vary the height of trays instead of having ‘one size fits all’. This leads to far greater efficiencies and lower costs, because corrugated trays make much better use of space on pallets. A recent study showed that standard 60x40cm corrugated produce trays, for example, outperform plastic trays in terms of space efficiency - 91-98 per cent utilisation versus plastics at 66-81 per cent.

For example, the transport of cucumbers in a plastic 40x30cm tray typically uses a fixed height of 135mm and much of this is not used. With corrugated, bespoke design allows a reduced height of 80mm, which means the full height of the tray is used. A pallet might typically have 10 trays per layer and this means, with corrugated, you can have 20 layers and 200 trays on a pallet compared with just 10 layers and 100 trays using plastic. More products per pallet lead to greater efficiencies, lower costs and fewer trucks on the roads.”

Barnetson also highlights the practice of decanting from corrugated into plastic trays at retailers’ distribution centres as having an impact on the environment. He said; “The impact of decanting is that there can be as many as four times more truck journeys for the onward journey using plastic trays instead of corrugated. The retailer may have good commercial reasons for this action but it has a big impact in terms of CO2 emissions.”

The CPI also argues that although plastic trays are reusable, reuse is not always better than recycling. “The Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) recognises the ‘reduce-reuse-recycle’ waste hierarchy, but importantly identifies that there may be situations when recycling is better than reusing,” said Barnetson. “We believe that, in many cases, the transport of fresh produce is one of those situations, especially as the supply of corrugated is more easily calibrated to seasonal demand.

If everyone is really signing up to reducing environmental impact, such considerations should be factored into the design of truly sustainable distribution systems.”