Taxpayers' £8m 'bribe' for the food giant

Household names - including Coca-Cola, Tesco, Heinz and Marks & Spencer - have benefited from millions of pounds handed out by a quango to help them cut down on unnecessary wrapping.

The Conservatives revealed that the Waste and Resources Action Programme - WRAP for short - has an £8 million budget to "help retailers reduce their production, storage and transportation costs".

WRAP is the quango responsible for ordering local authorities to switch to controversial fortnightly collections.

Last week, the Daily Mail launched twin campaigns to save the weekly bin round and cut down on excess packaging.

WRAP's Waste Minimisation Fund was set up in 2004 to help firms fund research into more environmentally-friendly packaging, which would help reduce landfill.

Not all of the £8 million has been spent so far - but WRAP refused to say how much is left. Phillip Ward, director of waste implementation programmes at the quango, insisted that most of the money had gone to smaller companies and just 10 per cent had gone to High Street giants.

Companies which have successfully applied for funding include Coca-Cola, Argos, Asda, Tesco, Heinz, Coors, Co-op, B&Q, Marks & Spencer, Northern Foods and Iceland. Tesco alone made pre-tax profits of £2.55billion in 2006 - equivalent to more than £4,800 a minute - and spends £600 million a year on packaging.

The Tories said companies should be cutting waste anyway as part of their own corporate responsibility drives.

Tory environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: "We all accept the need to reduce packaging waste at the source. However, an £8 million bribe is entirely the wrong approach. Multi-billion pound companies should be doing this off their own bat and if they are not, we need to ask why."

The companies involved last night insisted the state funds accounted for a small proportion of the money spent on developing more environmentally-friendly wrapping and said they were also investing large sums themselves.