Cutting down plastic: Halifax-born Quality Streets to be wrapped in PAPER to help save environment

Nestlé has announced that all but two of its Quality Street chocolates will, going forwards, be wrapped in paper.

By replacing the double layer of foil and cellulose, the firm says it will remove more than two billion pieces of packaging material from the brand’s supply chain.

KitKat wrappers are also changing, with a move to coverings made with 80 per cent recycled plastic.

Quality Street was invented in 1936 by Harold Mackintosh - the son of John and Violet Mackintosh - who opened the world’s first toffee factory in Halifax in 1898.

Quality Street is made by Nestlé in the same Halifax factory where the first assortment was produced 80 years ago, and where around 12.5 million individual Quality Street sweets are made every day during peak season.

Nine of the 11 Quality Street sweets will move to paper-based packaging.

The Orange Crunch and the Green Triangle will remain in their foil wrappers.

The transition to paper, which is now underway, will take several months to complete, says Nestlé, so for Christmas 2022, consumers will find a mix of both the old and new wrappers in their Quality Street cartons, pouches, tubs, and tins.

Richard Watson, Business Executive Officer at Nestlé Confectionery, said: “These major packaging innovations have been pioneered by our teams here in the UK.

“The category-leading Quality Street paper twist-wraps have been designed at our Confectionery Product Technology Centre in York, and implemented in Halifax, the home of Quality Street for 87 years.

“Nestlé Confectionery is taking a leadership position on packaging sustainability as we work towards reducing our use of virgin plastic by one third and making all our packaging recyclable or reusable within the next three years.

"The changes we are announcing today have been informed by detailed lifecycle assessments that have enabled us to identify solutions with a lower environmental impact than our current packaging.”

Quality Street is the second Nestlé confectionery brand to introduce paper, following Smarties which rolled out recyclable paper packaging for all its confectionery products globally in 2021.