QUALITY Street has axed the iconic brightly coloured plastic wrappers that surround its famous chocolates after 86 years.
The confectionary maker behind the Christmas favourites have said they are getting rid of the see-through packaging and foil.
In a bid to become more environmentally-friendly, they will be wrapped in a form of waxed paper which is recyclable.
The move is designed to stop around two billion wrappers a year being thrown into landfill.
Fans of the famous choc selection will see the change in the coming weeks.
Chocolate historian Alex Hutchinson, who used to be the official archivist at Rowntree Mackintosh said: “It’s a huge deal. And it’s a bit sad.
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“Because when Harold Mackintosh originally launched Quality Street he specifically designed it to be an explosion of colour, different flavours, different shapes. The wrapping was absolutely key.”
However, the new wrappers will still keep their distinctive colour – with the hazelnut in caramel purple paper, the coconut eclair in blue and the fudge in pink.
But the sparkle that the plastic wrappers had has been replaced by a paper that is neither fully matt nor fully shiny.
The paper has a coating of vegetable-based wax, which helps protect the chocolate inside.
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Nestle’s head of sustainability Cheryl Allen said the company thought long and hard before making the change.
She said: “Quality Street is a brand that people feel very strongly about.
“We know that opening the lid and seeing ‘the jewels’, as we call them, is really important.
“We think we’ve done a really good job with the redesign, and feel confident that people will respond positively.”
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In 2008 Nestle tried to make the Quality Street wrappers more eco-friendly and started producing the plastic outer wrappers from compostable cellulose, but the company admitted only a small number of consumers bothered to actually compost them.
Around 1.7billiion Quality Street “jewels” are gobbled up in Britain every year, the equivalent of about 63 per household.
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