Guardian to be first national newspaper with biodegradable wrapping

The Guardian’s print edition will no longer be sold in plastic packaging, becoming the first national newspaper to switch to biodegradable wrapping. 

The Saturday edition of the paper contains a large number of supplements which are currently packaged in polythene to meet the demands of retailers and ensure they reach readers. 

From this weekend, the Weekend magazine, the Guide, Feast, and Review will instead be wrapped in a material based on potato starch, which readers are encouraged to compost or put in their food waste recycling bin. The packaging does not contain any genetically modified material. 

The change will increase production costs for the Guardian but is part of the newspaper’s plan to reduce plastic waste, following feedback from readers. The change will be phased in across the whole of the country over the coming months, starting this weekend for readers in London, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. 

It's a little late in the game for more research, but after sourcing out some packaging for my zine I came across this article about The Guardian's new compostable packaging. 

I'm kicking myself a little bit because if I had found out about this at an earlier stage in the process I would have really loved to look into this more sustainable option. It would also double up as a unique selling point, a page in the zine could be dedicated to describing how to plant it/ the things it could help grow etc. 

At this stage however, I don't feel that I have the time to order some new packaging. As well as this, it would be wasteful to disregard the plastic wallets that I've already purchased for the project. Alas, it's something to think about for the future.