Talking Retail Grocery and product news for independent retailers
The six Morrisons outlets in Edinburgh aim to be waste free by 2025 – either from initiatives in the store itself or from changes in the way customers use them.
If successful, the concept will be rolled out to all the retailer’s 498 UK stores as part of a plan to recycle all its waste.
Tesco and Waitrose are also stepping up their efforts to deal with the challenge of plastic waste with new initiatives.
The Morrisons trial will incorporate a partnership with Nestlé to collect and recycle hard-to-recycle soft plastics for the first time.
All waste collected in the stores will be recycled in this country to avoid the need to export materials to be processed overseas.
Shop waste including hard plastics, cardboard, food and green waste, tins, cans and foils will be sorted by warehouse staff then collected by a range of specialist waste companies for recycling.
Customer waste will include hard-to-recycle soft plastics such as confectionery wrappers and pet food pouches, hard plastics such as yoghurt tubs, crisp tubes, ink cartridges and batteries, plus previously un-recycled items such as foils and plant pots.
It will be collected at new dedicated collection points situated in Morrisons zero waste store foyers, before being collected for recycling.
More unsold food will also be offered to customers through the Too Good to Go app.
Jamie Winter, sustainability procurement director at Morrisons, said: “Sometimes you need to take giant steps and we believe that waste is one of those areas.
“We believe that we can, at a stroke, enable these trial stores to move from recycling around 27% of their general waste to over 84% and with a clear line of sight to 100%.
“We all need to see waste as a resource to be repurposed and reused.
“The technology, creativity and will exists: it’s a question of harnessing the right process for the right type of waste and executing it well.
“And all waste collected in our stores will be recycled here in the UK: we will not reprocess anything abroad.
“If we’re successful, we’ll roll this zero waste store concept out across the UK as fast as we can.”
Morrisons is immediately introducing the facilities to increase the amount of general waste that can be recycled from 27% up to 84% in the six Edinburgh outlets.
Plans to introduce collections for the remaining 16% of waste produced will be developed and implemented before 2025.
Tesco is extending its zero-waste shopping service from online to its retail outlets and will allow shoppers to buy products from detergent to ketchup in refillable packaging.
Shoppers in 10 outlets in the east of England can now use the Loop function and pay a deposit fee on each piece of packaging which is fully refundable through an app when the item is returned.
The Loop range comes pre-filled in the appropriate container so there is no need for the shopper to bring their own.
Brands involved in the initiative include Coca-Cola, Persil, Quaker Oats and Tetley.
Waitrose has also announced it will be removing its 10p “bags for life” at the end of September and replacing them with new 50p ones which it claims are twice as durable.
It is also removing bags from all Waitrose deliveries and collections – a move that it says will save some 40 million bags a year.
