Quality Street chocolate swaps foil wrappers for recyclable paper after 86 years

Quality Street chocolates are a Christmas-time staple in many a British household. Credit: PA

Chocolate lovers dipping into a tin of Quality Street this Christmas will notice a small change to the packaging of the iconic sweets.

Instead of the foil and cellulose wrapping customers are familiar with, the chocolate will instead be packaged in recyclable paper wrappers.

This eco-friendly move will remove almost 2.5 billion individual pieces of packaging from its supply chain globally, Quality Street owner Nestle says.

Two flavors - Orange Crunch and the Green Triangle - will remain in their existing foil wrappers as they can already be recycled.

The move to new paper packaging for the nine remaining twist-wrapped sweets will take a few months to fully implement so until the end of the year, customers can expect to find both new and existing types of wrappers in their cartons, pouches, tubs and tins.

Louise Barrett, Head of the Nestlé Confectionery Product Technology Centre in York, said: "With nine different sweets to consider, the transition has been a huge undertaking.

"Each of our existing machines need to be adapted to run paper and then rigorously tested by our packaging experts to ensure we're still delivering the same quality consumers expect when they open a box of Quality Street. "Quality Street made history from the start, using the world's first twist-wrapping machine to revolutionise the way chocolates were manufactured and sold.

"Now we are making history again with the introduction of paper packaging for our famous sweets.

"We hope the fact that our famous sweets are now recyclable will make finding your own Quality Street favourites even more popular this year."

The famous dual foil and cellulose packaging will be replaced with recyclable paper wrappers. Credit: PA

It comes a year after recycling paper packaging was introduced for Smarties, with Quality Street the second Nestle brand to move to paper.

KitKats will also begin using wrappers made with 80% recycled plastic.

Since it was first launched in 1936, Quality Street has been produced in Halifax, West Yorkshire.


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