Seaweed meets the stadium crowd.
The tray still looks like a tray. The less visible change is its seaweed-based lining: a barrier between the meal and the paperboard beneath it.
GB United KingdomIn practice. Seaweed-coated food packaging was used at Wembley’s 2025 summer concerts. Deployment quantities are supplier-reported.
What to keep in view
Deployment volumes and estimated savings reported by the supplier are not independent lifecycle findings. Wembley trialled several initiatives together, so whole-venue results cannot be attributed to Notpla alone.
A thin layer does a specific job
Paperboard gives a food tray its shape. A barrier helps it contain grease and moisture during the meal. Notpla uses a seaweed-based coating for that second job, replacing the conventional plastic lining rather than making the whole tray out of seaweed.
The distinction matters. A claim about the coating is not automatically a description of every part of a finished package. Notpla’s product information also notes the use of adhesive in some packaging: the complete construction is the useful unit to examine.
The stadium is the test environment
Wembley confirmed that Notpla containers were introduced during Coldplay’s ten-show residency in 2025. For a caterer, the substitute has to work within an existing service: food goes in, customers carry it, and the used packaging enters the venue’s collection system.
The stadium changed several things together, including drinks containers and collection practices. Its reported recycling and waste figures describe that combined operation. They cannot tell us how much of the result came from the food-container coating alone.
Follow the tray after the meal
Notpla describes the coated packaging as compatible with paper recycling and home composting. Those material properties do not establish which route a used tray actually takes. Food contamination, the available collection service and local acceptance rules still matter.
Our reading: the strongest lesson is to specify the material and the surrounding service together. Ask what the barrier does during use, what the finished item contains and where it goes afterwards. A credible material substitution has to answer all three.
Supplier-reported deployment · Reported 13 October 2025
350,000+ food packs used at ten concerts
Notpla reports that Wembley served food in more than 350,000 of its seaweed-coated trays and boxes during a ten-concert run.
What this tells us. The count demonstrates use at a demanding venue. It does not by itself establish the packaging’s full environmental impact.
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