Hotel Choc summer2 WEB

Source: Hotel Chocolat

In-store staff are flagging the initiative to its customers.

Hotel Chocolat is encouraging its customers to bring plastic packaging to stores to be recycled.

The move comes as part of the retailer’s ongoing sustainability efforts. Shoppers can bring any clean plastic packaging to one of its 103 stores and cafés across the UK, which the upmarket chocolatier will then recycle for them.

The scheme includes packaging from any product or retailer, and in-store employees are flagging the initiative to customers.

Hotel Chocolat CEO and co-founder Angus Thirlwell told The Grocer that shoppers’ interest in the scheme is “building and building”.

It introduced the step as part of its push to become more environmentally friendly. The retailer has pledged to make all its packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2021, and has already introduced packaging made using sugar cane that is sustainable, biodegradable and compostable for its A Dozen Quails Eggs box (rsp: £10 for 145g).

Read more: Hotel Chocolat rolls out sugar cane packaging for Easter

Thirlwell said it implemented the plant fibre bagasse packaging to “show its intent and determination to have plant-powered and environmental packaging”.

He added consumers have responded well to it, and sales are “very strong”, which it has taken “as a vote of confidence”.

“We are now doubling our efforts to accelerate the rest of our sustainability programme,” Thirlwell said.