Plastic tub gets the snub as Nestlé tests paper container for Quality Street | Nestlé | The Guardian

Christmas-favourite sweet brand hopes to cut virgin plastic use, but consumers may mourn reusable tub

Tucking into a tub of Quality Street is a Christmas tradition for many British families, and once they have scoffed the chocolates the handy container often takes on a new life, being used for many years as a cake tin or Lego storage box.

But the useful plastic tub could be looking at its last Christmas as the confectionery brand’s owner tests the reaction of Quality Street fans to a new paper container.

While the new vessel is born out of a desire by the brand’s owner, Nestlé, to cut its use of virgin plastic, the public reaction is hard to predict. In 2022, the decision to replace Quality Street’s colourful plastic wrappers with recyclable paper ones received mixed reviews. Indeed, the TikTok riposte of one former Quality Street lover went viral after she called it a “travesty”, asking rhetorically: “Who wants to eat this piece of garbage?”

However, Nestlé has stuck with the paper wrappers and has now gone a step further, producing about 200,000 of the paper tubs which will go on sale in selected Tesco stores from next week.

But after years of shrinking containers – mercifully, this year the product has the same weight and recommended price of £5.50 – and altered lineups, Nestlé knows it has a hard sell on its hands. To this end, it claims the tub, in the signature Quality Street purple, has a “luxurious design, and feel, and is embellished with gold foil”. It also has an “integrated re-close feature”, which sounds like a fancy term for a lid.

“We’re looking forward to seeing what Quality Street fans make of the paper tub,” said Jemma Handley, a senior brand manager for Quality Street. “A lot of care and hard work has gone into the trial and we’re proud to be the first major manufacturer to trial a paper tub at Christmas.”

The “beautiful design” has been devised specifically for a paper product and shoppers could expect the “same great tasting Quality Street sweets that they know and love inside”, she said.

The big plus point, obviously, is that when the box is empty it can be put in the household recycling along with all the empty wrappers. However, ultimately the public will decide on whether it is adopted more widely.

Nestlé said it would be “evaluating the tub’s popularity with shoppers” and also taking on board feedback from Tesco staff who will be on the frontline dealing with this change.

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The shake-up is part of a wider industry drive to make its packaging more sustainable. Even if not everyone was a fan, the 2022 move to paper twist-wrapped sweets kept 2bn wrappers a year out of landfill. However, as with any radical packaging change, Nestlé said it wanted to “get it right”, with shoppers still able to buy the plastic tub, tin and cartons alongside the paper version this year.