Sainsbury’s has rolled out new cardboard hangers across its Tu Clothing Baby Retailer-owned Brand range, replacing five million plastic hangers and saving an impressive 103 tons of plastic from being used.

The swap, a UK supermarket first, follows a successful trial and will be available in over 400 stores. The change has been made on Tu Clothing Babywear items previously on a plastic hanger. They allow customers to recycle the cardboard hangers at home, helping them reduce their environmental impact too.

Sainsbury’s offers an in-store recycling service for Tu Clothing plastic hangers to encourage a circular economy for packaging. When checking out in-store, customers and colleagues can leave behind their plastic hangers, which will then be returned for recycling. Between January and July this year, Sainsbury’s returned 12 million hangers from checkouts, equivalent to 85 tons of plastic.

Sainsbury’s has made many changes to its packaging in recent months, including being the first UK retailer to switch its laundry detergent packaging from plastic to cardboard. In May, Sainsbury’s also removed single-use plastic trays from its by Sainsbury’s whole chicken range. The plastic savings from these two changes alone combine to result in an impressive saving of around 162 tons each year.