AN ANTI-PLASTIC campaigner has taken a delivery from the sky to mark the revolutionary paper packaging switch by a Northwich bakery.

Anna Lund, from Great Sankey, runs an Instagram-based @no.more.plastic.fantastic campaign and was treated to a loaf from Roberts bakery.

Doing something ‘drastic about plastic’, Roberts has reduced plastic in its bread bags by 53 per cent - switching its core ranges into sustainably sourced paper.

It is the first bakery brand in the UK to do so.

Dubbed the Bread Arrows, the drones performed an acrobatic display to mark the new paper bags hitting shelves of 300 Tesco stores in Warrington and across the UK – giving the nation’s bread buyers an environmentally-friendly option.

Anna said: “I am passionate about taking plastic out of my life and spend a lot of time encouraging others to do the same.

"So, it’s great to see a bread manufacturer taking responsibility and making it easy for the people of Warrington to do the right thing.

"It is so important to cut down on our plastic consumption, thank you Roberts Bakery for heading in the right direction.”

UK bakeries produce 10,700 tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging every year.

Most goes straight to landfill or it must be taken to specialist recycling points. Roberts is the first bakery brand to come up with a bag that can be put into the paper or mixed recycling bin.

The bakery’s innovation director, Alison Ordonez said: “Plastic is an increasingly important topic for us all. This latest development represents a big shift in beginning to address the problems it poses in the bread industry.

"But it’s not an easy task. Delivering fresh bread - of the quality that our consumers love - in a paper bag rather than plastic, is more challenging because you need the ‘preserving’ layer of plastic to keep the bread fresh.”

The new bag is made from sustainably-sourced paper with a very thin poly prop coating to ensure that the loaves stay fresh.

Alison added: “Our vision is to become the next generation bakery, and we’ve taken the lead in developing packaging solutions first.

"It’s part of our ongoing journey to become 100 per cent plastic free.

"If we don’t start acting, there won’t be a next generation – we feel really strongly about that.”