Little Freddie is launching the UK’s first baby food pouch that can be recycled at home. Assessed by OPRL to be recyclable the first two flavours launch in Ocado and Sainsbury’s in the coming weeks.
Award-winning organic baby and toddler food brand Little Freddie is launching the UK’s first fully recyclable pouch that can be recycled at home in the coming weeks. The two flavours launching first are ‘Super Strawberries & Bananas’ and ‘Mighty Mango & Passionfruit’. They are available in a multipack, using FSC certified cardboard and are printed using eco-friendly vegetable-based inks.
As part of their sustainability strategy – ‘The Big Green Plan’ – Little Freddie is committed to ensuring their packaging is 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. A major step towards achieving this is their launch of the UK’s first mono material pouch designed to be fully recyclable (with the cap on), which is not only lighter to transport but also less carbon intensive to create.
After several years of testing and trialling alternative packaging materials, Little Freddie can now offer parents a pouch made from one (mono) material called polypropylene.
Assessed by the On-Pack Recycling Label (OPRL) scheme to meet the requirements of their ‘Recycle’ designation, these pouches will carry a recycle label, meaning they can be accepted by kerbside recycling. This is a momentous step and provides a simple and convenient method for disposal by parents. Over the next 12 months, Little Freddie anticipates this will save over 350,000 pouches from landfill, equivalent of 2.5 tonnes of plastic.
Being unable to offer parents the convenience of kerbside recycling has always remained a point of concern and focus for Little Freddie. This is why they initially launched their return recycling scheme with UK recycler, Enval, as the scheme provided a zero-waste option when no other ‘home-recycling’ solution was available. Their partnership with Enval will remain in place so parents can continue to recycle those products not currently labelled as recyclable.
The fully recyclable products also feature a verified climate footprint by CarbonCloud. Little Freddie wants to help their parents make more informed eco-conscious decisions by sharing credible quantitative environmental information about their products. With the help of CarbonCloud, all of the greenhouse gases emitted during the ‘farm-to-shelf’ journey have been calculated and presented as a climate footprint. Little Freddie is the first baby food brand in the world to go climate transparent as they hope to raise awareness of the environmental impact of food and support parents who want to understand and reduce their ‘food footprint’.
Following the launch of this range, Little Freddie intends to roll-out both the fully recyclable pouch and climate labels across their entire UK pouch range in the coming years. They hope to inspire other brands, not only in the baby food sector, but within the flexible packaging industry to join them in adopting recyclable pouches as well as quantifying their climate footprints.
Their Super Strawberries & Bananas with 30% less sugar on average than the leading brand and their Mighty Mango & Passionfruit made with the superior Alphonso Mango, will launch in Sainsbury’s and Ocado with an RRP of £4.00.
Alice Harlock, Membership & Services Manager at OPRL comments: “We’re thrilled to see Little Freddie launch the very first baby food pouch which has gone through stringent testing to achieve our certified As recyclable marque. As a result, it carries our ’recycle – cap On’ label which makes recycling much easier for busy parents by adding these pouches to home recycling collections and preventing them from ending up in landfill. This innovation is a fine example of brands helping their customers to do the right thing by making recycling simple.”
