Three parts to your meal pack. Here is what each one is made from and where it should go.

The sleeve

Home recycling

Printed cardboard. The inks are water based and food safe.

  • Slide it off and flatten it.
  • Put it straight in your household cardboard recycling.
  • Nothing needs removing first.

The tray

Check your council

Around 90 percent sugarcane fibre, a by product of sugar production, with a thin polyester lining on the inside that keeps the food sealed and lets the tray go in the oven.

  • Scrape or rinse out whatever is left.
  • Check whether your council collects lined food trays. Some do, most do not yet.
  • If yours does not, it belongs in general waste.

Please do not compost it and please do not put it in with cardboard. The lining is what makes the tray ovenable, and it also stops the fibre breaking down the way plain board would.

The film lid

General waste

Polyester film, the peelable layer sealed across the top.

  • Peel it off and put it in general waste.
  • It is not collected at the kerbside.

The carrier bag bins in supermarkets are for polyethylene, things like bread bags and pasta wrap. This film is polyester, a different plastic, and putting it in those bins spoils the batch for everything else. Please keep it out of them.

What we are working on

The two we want to fix

The lid is first. We are testing films that councils actually collect, so the whole pack can go in one bin. After that comes the tray lining, where the question is whether we can make it thin enough to recycle or drop it entirely without losing the oven.

The sugarcane itself we are happy with. It is a by product that would otherwise be waste, and it is the bulk of the tray by weight.

If something here is unclear, or you know your council does take these, tell us at support@homecooks.app. It genuinely helps us build a better picture.

Check for yourself