Warning to anyone buying yoghurts in supermarkets

It’s one of the staples in every shopping basket along with milk and cheese – but supermarket shoppers are being urged to avoid one common yoghurt pitfall in a bid to help Mother Earth.

If you want to turn your yoghurt into yog-help, there is one quick change you can make to your yoghurt shopping habits.

Supermarket shoppers are urged to ditch buying individual yoghurts and instead bulk buy big pots that can then be decanted into jars at home.

This change in habit can go a long way to helping reduce plastic waste in the UK and is a much more environmentally-friendly way to shop.

In his book ‘Plastic Sucks’, McFly star and author Dougie Poynter, calls on people to make small changes to their lifestyle to help cut down on plastic use and says this simple act can make a big difference.

Poynter says: “There is likely to be loads of plastic waste around your kitchen, in your utility cupboard and in the fridge.

“A good rule of thumb is to buy in bulk, to take your own bags and containers to local shops or seek out foot items in jars or cardboard. At the supermarket, instead of individual yoghurts buy a big pot and decant into jars at home.”

According to The Big Plastic Count 2024, UK households throw away an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic every week – with around 60 pieces per household. This is equivalent to 90 billion tonnes of waste per year. Of this, 81% of plastic food waste comes from food and drink packaging, most likely from supermarkets.

As part of the UK Plastics Pact, supermarkets promised to make all of their packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, but results from the 2024 survey show that they are still miles off reaching that goal, so it falls to shoppers to do their bit to help.

Of course, small changes have been made by supermarkets to help combat plastic waste and now most yoghurts are sold without a film lid rather than a plastic one to cut down on plastic use.

Yoghurt brand Yoplait also recently changed its yoghurt drink bottles to be made from clear PET plastic rather than white, following criticism about their recyclability by comedian Joe Lycett.

Lycett staged a walkout on Channel 4 show Steph’s Packed Lunch in a bid to highlight the difficulty of recycling white PET.

In a social media post at the time he wrote: “You may remember a few weeks ago I walked off Channel 4 daytime show ‘Steph’s Packed Lunch’ to get people talking about white and coloured PET plastic, which is much harder to recycle than clear PET plastic.

“Specifically I wanted yoghurt drink Yop! to change their bottle from white PET plastic to clear PET plastic. Over the following 48 hours my stunt made all the tabloids, was one of the most read stories on BBC News and trended on twitter.

“Well I am beyond delighted to announce that following my stunt Yop! have now committed to changing their bottle to clear PET plastic in 2022 and are aiming for it to be made with recycled plastic. The world – or at least the world of chilled yogurt drinks – has been changed for the better.”

So while you might notice some positive changes to yoghurt pots and packaging on supermarket shelves, you can still help to make a difference to plastic waste by bulk buying yoghurts where you can and decanting these into your own storage jars at home.