Across the country businesses are looking at ways of ditching single-use plastics to help the environment.

Now Ipswich Town is getting on board, beginning with its Planet Blue merchandise store in Portman Road.

The club is replacing plastic carrier bags with paper ones, though still Town branded and blue and white. They were introduced for the first time for a match day on Tuesday against Brentford.

Lee Hyde, director of retail at Ipswich Town, said: “There are a number of discussions, being had currently, on how football clubs can look to reduce the volume of single-use plastics within the industry.

“We have decided to make a change away from plastic carrier bags to try and reduce the impact these have on the environment.

“We have a small amount of remaining stock which we will use up alongside the new paper bags, but in future we will only be supplying paper bags to customers. The new bag range is fully recyclable and compostable meaning these will be better for the environment and will reduce the impact on plastics being sent to landfill.

“We are also working with our merchandise suppliers to reduce the amount of plastic used within the packaging of the products being sold through our store.

“Although this is a much lengthier project due to the shelf life of our existing product range, we’ve made some promising initial impact on new products being ordered.”