TIME United Kindgom

Please Stop Mailing Your Empty Potato Chip Bags, Royal Mail Urges British Protestors

Leicester City v Sevilla FC - UEFA Champions League Round of 16: Second Leg
Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images A Walkers packet of Cheers and Onion crisps during the UEFA Champions League Round of 16 second leg match between Leicester City and Sevilla FC at The King Power Stadium on March 14, 2017 in Leicester, United Kingdom.

The postal service in the United Kingdom has asked members of the public to stop mailing potato chip bags after a social media campaign resulted in a surge of chip packages, causing messy delays.

The movement which was launched on Friday, asked activists to post pictures of themselves sending their empty bags back to the manufacturer, Walkers. It’s an effort to pressure Britain’s largest potato chip brand to stop packaging its products in plastic.

The company has a mailing address that allows people in the U.K. to send them letters free of charge, so the campaign’s website advertised that it “won’t cost a penny” for people to send their chip bags. Protesters were asked to merely put a label with Walkers’ address on the packet.

Although Walkers plans to produce plastic-free packaging for the 11 million daily bags of chips the company produces by 2025, campaigners believe this is too long a wait. A petition in conjunction with the campaign, which has over 300,000 signatures, demands the company owned by PepsiCo “change the materials for their packets to one which is recyclable or even more preferably a non-plastic environmentally friendly material.”

U.K. law states that its national mail service must deliver post if it is properly addressed, but the Royal Mail has encouraged those involved to at least use an envelope.

Tap to read full story

Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com


YOU BROKE TIME.COM!

Dear TIME Reader,

As a regular visitor to TIME.com, we are sure you enjoy all the great journalism created by our editors and reporters. Great journalism has great value, and it costs money to make it. One of the main ways we cover our costs is through advertising.

The use of software that blocks ads limits our ability to provide you with the journalism you enjoy. Consider turning your Ad Blocker off so that we can continue to provide the world class journalism you have become accustomed to.

The TIME Team