Food packaging adds more than 20 per cent to the cost of buying fruit at a leading supermarket, according to a recent investigation.

The Evening Standard found that a Waitrose customer who fills a large bowl with fresh fruit worth £12.41 can expect to spend an extra £4.67 if they choose pre-packed produce over loose goods.

Unnecessary food packaging includes cardboard containers, plastic cartons, polystyrene inserts and cellophane wrapping.

Noelle Virtue, senior research officer for the Women’s Institute, which has recently been featured on freshinfo for its campaigns against excessive packaging, said the real cost was even higher.

“For every £50 spent on food by the average household, roughly £8 goes towards packaging, adding around £470 to the average annual bill,” she said. “Clearly there is a lot of room for improvement, especially in the area of fruit and vegetables, where it makes no sense at all to encase the products in wrapping.”

The findings come as environment minister Ben Bradshaw encouraged shoppers to boycott heavily packaged fruit and vegetables to encourage retailers to become more environmentally friendly.

Bradshaw told MPs: “Consumers have a part to play in encouraging producers to reduce unnecessary waste, by choosing goods that are not heavily packaged, buying loose rather than pre-packed food and re-using bags.”

His comments could not have come at a more pertinent time, with retail chain Sainsbury’s planning a disposable plastic bag ban for one day only, on April 27. Shoppers passing through checkouts a week on Friday will instead be given reusable bags, which ordinarily cost 10p, for free, a move the chain has dubbed “ a revolution in supermarket shopping”. Bags which later wear out will be replaced for free.

The 24-hour embargo has been designed to make people aware of the environmental costs of their actions and encourage them to cut down on plastic usage.

Customer director Gwyn Burr said: “We will provide the bags for free, but we need customers to reuse them to really make the difference. Customers often want to do their bit, but don’t know where to start.”

The day is expected to cost the retailer some £700,000. Sainsbury’s says that customers who use the reusable bags an average of 20 times save 90 million disposable bags each year.

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