Mars bars to get eco-friendly make over

Image source, Mars Wrigley

Are you passionate about the planet but sometimes feel sad your favourite snacks are wrapped in single-use plastic?

Well, one of the world's best selling sweet snacks is getting an eco-friendly make-over.

Don't worry, there won't be any changes to the flavour, but Mars bars will be ditching their traditional plastic wrapper for more environmentally-friendly paper packaging.

The company behind the gooey confectionary, Mars Incorporated, have said they will be changing the wrapper on a temporary basis to explore different packaging options.

If it works, it could set the bar for other sweet, chocolate and snack companies to do the same.

The new packaging will be rolled out at selected Tesco stores in the UK from Monday.

Why are paper wrappers needed?

Image source, Christopher Furlong

Image caption, Thirty-five million plastic bottles are sold in the UK every day

The problem with plastic wrappers is that most of it isn't biodegradable. It doesn't rot, like paper or food, so instead it can hang around in the environment for hundreds of years.

Each year, 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced and 40% of that is single-use - plastic we'll only use once before it's binned.

Other examples of single-use plastic are carrier bags, drinks bottles and crisp packets.