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Marks & Spencer, which has championed its green credentials this year, is named as the worst offender in a British government report.

	M&S: not as green as it looks

The Local Government Association, which undertook the research, has warned retailers that unless they sharpen up their act council tax bills could soar by £3 billion.

A basket of 29 different foods – meat, vegetables, fruit, cheese, a pack of biscuits, jam, bread and margarine – was compared across all the major retailers and the research found that M&S was responsible for 782 grams of packaging, with only Lidl responsible for more.

On average, 5 per cent of the total weight of all the shopping baskets’ content was made up of packaging.

Tesco used the least packaging at 685 grams per basket.

A 400g pack of strawberries, for instance, was packaged in a 43g punnet at M&S – more than twice the weight of the punnet at Sainsbury’s.

The packaging was also analysed to find out how much of it was recyclable. On this measure M&S came out the worst, with 40 per cent of it unable to be recycled.

The Friends of the Earth said they were very disappointed by the findings.

Becky Slater of the campaigning environmental group said: “Despite constant green claims, supermarkets continue to act as a hindrance, not a help, when it comes to green consumer action. Packaging urgently needs to be minimised and made from materials that are easy to reuse, recycle or compost.”

The LGA said that though supermarkets were working hard to reduce packaging, an estimated 20 per cent of all landfill comes from supermarket and there are no signs of the total amount of rubbish reducing.

At this rate the UK will miss its landfill targets set by the European Union – landing councils with a £3 billion fine in 2010.

Marks & Spencer’s head of corporate social responsibility Mike Barry said: “We’ve set ourselves clear and demanding targets to reduce our packaging and only use materials that can be easily recycled or composted.

“While we’ve made good progress over the last 12 months, we know there’s still much more yet to do in both areas.”

The retailer added that councils needed to be more consistent about what was recyclable, pointing out that some councils allowed cardboard to be put in recycling boxes, while others did not.