Consumers who buy Mars bars at Tesco in the future will note a change in the plastic wrapper: the chocolate bar's usual plastic wrapper has been replaced with a more environmentally friendly paper wrapper.
Mars Incorporated is trialling recyclable paper wrapping for a limited period, with the bars available from Monday at 500 Tesco stores.
The company is looking to explore different forms of packaging, and how these are useful in everyday life. It said it would use the feedback to inform future packaging pilots.
Crisps, chocolate and cheese have been viewed as the worst foods for packaging recyclability, and big brands have previously been pressured by customers and campaigners to do more to replace their wrappers to help the environment.
Mars is not the first candy company to try trading in its traditional wrapping for something a bit more green.
The move follows the decision by Quality Street to scrap its traditional foil and plastic wrappers for recyclable paper before Christmas.
Nestl's decision, made by the brand's owner, marked the end of shiny plastic wrappers for the first time since its launch in 1936, in favor of a type of packaging collected by most local authorities for nine of its 11 sweets.
The orange crunch and the green triangle remained in their existing foil wrappers, as they were not wrapped in a layer of plastic.
The same day, Nestl announced it would discontinue KitKat wrappers and replace them with 80% recycled plastic, allowing them to be recycled at supermarkets across the UK or put in household recycling in Ireland.
Mars said it was exploring different types of alternative packaging solutions for its confectionery products.
For Mars bar, Richard Sutherland-Moore, a Packaging Expert at Mars Wrigley UK's research and development centre, said: The challenge was to find the right paper packaging solution with an adequate level of barrier properties to protect the chocolate while guaranteeing the food safety, quality and integrity of the product to prevent food waste. Mars said it is investing hundreds of millions of pounds to redesign thousands of types of packaging and isaiming to decrease the use of virgin plastics by a quarter in the short term, while also increasing its use of recycled plastic in its packaging.
Andrew Flood, a packaging development manager at Tesco, said Mars s trial of its new Mars bar packaging aligned with the retailer s own strategy of removing plastic and packaging in our business, reducing it where we can t, reusing more and recycling what s left.
Sainsbury s had to defend its decision to vacuum pack all its beef mince, becoming the first UK retail to do so after customers criticised the new wrapping as very medical too compressed and vile. Despite the criticism, the supermarket said that the new packaging would more than halve the amount used per pack helping to save 450 tonnes of plastic a year and told shoppers the mince in the new packets was exactly the same out of the same machines as in previous packs.