Modern Milkman has launched the UK’s first home-compostable bread bag in partnership with packaging innovator Treetop Biopak, marking a new step in tackling single-use plastic in everyday grocery packaging.
Modern Milkman, the British scale-up reimagining the traditional milk round, is rolling out the new bags across its freshly baked bread range nationwide. The packaging will be introduced at no extra cost to customers.
The bags, developed by Treetop Biopak, are fully home compostable and designed to break down in around 12 months without leaving microplastics or harmful residue. By comparison, conventional plastic bread bags can take up to 450 years to degrade.
The single-layer material is also designed to be functional in use, keeping bread fresh while offering end-of-life flexibility — including home composting, food waste bins, or reuse as a liner for organic waste.
The rollout will cover bread supplied through Modern Milkman’s bakery partners, including Bread of Life and a wider network of local bakeries across the UK.
The move lands against a backdrop of significant packaging waste challenges in the UK. Around 11–12 million loaves of bread are sold every day, with plastic bread bags among the most common single-use items sent to landfill or incineration.
“The search for a solution that protects the quality of our bakery on the doorstep in an eco-friendly way has taken years – so we’re really excited to launch this to our customers,” said Jenny Thomason, Head of Commercial at Modern Milkman in the UK. “We’re incredibly proud of this move, bringing us one step closer to our mission of ensuring that with the products we deliver absolutely nothing goes to waste.”
“We are delighted that the strengths of our compostable solutions have been recognised and adopted by a proactively environmentally responsible operation such as Modern Milkman,” added Amir Goss, CEO of Treetop Biopak. “Performance strength was as fundamental as compostability in the decision to create this circular packaging approach.”
Modern Milkman, founded in 2018 in Lancashire, now operates a national delivery network using reusable glass bottles and returnable containers as part of a wider closed-loop model aimed at reducing single-use packaging.