Marks and Spencer has expanded its refill trial initiative to eight new stores nationwide.
The latest stores to feature the Fill Your Own initiative will include Lisburn, Stratford City London, Sears Solihull, Gyle, Vangarde Monks and Wolstanton Stoke – joining three existing stores in Manchester, Hedge End and Staines Two Rivers.
M&S also revealed that by the end of June M&S branches in Aintree and Meadowhall will also feature the scheme.
The Fill Your Own range was launched in December 2019 and offers 60 lines of refillable groceries, including pasta, rice, cereal, nuts and frozen fruit.
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Now, the latest range will include bake-at-home products such as all-butter croissants, pain aux chocolats and apricot twists.
The initiative supports M&S’s plan to reduce and reuse plastic and is set to avoid the use of over 300,000 units of single-use packaging over the next year – with over 30% of products outselling packaged versions.
“Fill Your Own has been hugely popular with our customers since it launched,” M&S head of sustainable business Carmel McQuaid said.
“They’ve told us that it’s easy to understand, offers a huge variety of the high-quality, great value M&S products they love and supports with portion control.
“Importantly, Fill Your Own is helping our customers – and our business – to reduce and reuse plastic and this initiative has the potential to save thousands of units each year.
“As our customers have navigated this completely new way of shopping, we’ve continued to test, learn and adapt the scheme based on their feedback and now we’re ready to expand it to more locations and introduce new product lines.”
The news comes as Waitrose announced it has started selling new packaging-free products after its “Unpacked” range showed strong sales over the past six months.
Customers in the Oxford, Wallingford, Abingdon and Cheltenham stores will be able to buy five refillable varieties of loose tea along with raisins, sultanas and other dried fruits.
