Member Article

Princes team cleans up at Hoylake beach

A team of volunteers from food and drink group Princes took part in a litter survey of a stretch of Hoylake beach. Employees from the Liver Building based company spent three hours collecting litter across a 100m x 50m stretch of beach along the north Wirral coastline.

The activity was conducted in conjunction with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), the UK’s leading marine charity. It works to raise awareness of the many threats that face our seas and coastline. Data from its annual Great British Beach Clean is stimulating change by businesses, governments and the public to reduce single-use plastic and other marine litter.

Over 400 pieces of litter were found during the survey of which more than three quarters were small pieces of plastic which presented a threat to marine life.

David McDiarmid, Corporate Relations Director at Princes said: “Participating in a beach clean is a great way of giving back to the places we care about, and that’s exactly what we set about doing at Hoylake. Most of our Liver Building colleagues are local to the area, and every one of them had personal reasons for giving up their time on a Saturday. Many colleagues at Princes work hard day to day to improve the recycled content and recyclability of our packaging, but a great many more in all of our teams share the desire to reduce the blight of litter from all sources in our oceans. We are very proud and grateful to of all of our colleagues who took part.”

Lizzie Prior, MCS Beach and River Cleans Officer, said: “It was great to see so many staff from Princes at the Hoylake beach clean. It’s very encouraging that Princes staff have been able to see, first hand, the amount of litter, including plastic packaging, that ends up on our beaches. Princes are clearly keen to make changes to the recyclable content of their packaging and we hope that a beach clean like this will further focus their commitment in this area.”

As well as cleaning up waste, Princes has taken significant steps to reduce the environmental impact of its operations. Last month, the business announced it is increasing the recycled content of the plastic it uses, as the shrink wrap packaging on its UK manufactured products moves to 50 percent post-consumer recycled waste (PCRW). This follows on from recent announcements on 51 percent recycled PET in soft drinks and oils and 30 percent HDPE in chilled juice drinks.

With a global supply network and a portfolio of branded and customer own brand products, Princes is one of the UK’s largest food and drink groups. Princes head office is based in Liverpool and the company also has a presence across continental Europe.

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