Supermarket “proud” Four Rs packaging strategy reduces environmental impact
Supermarket giant Tesco has now removed more than 1.5billion pieces of plastic from its UK business since launching its packaging strategy following the four Rs – Remove, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Greeting cards alone account for over 50million pieces of plastic within that total by losing the cellowrap, with naked cards very much order of the day on the new displays, which have been installed recently as a result of UK Greetings taking over as broker for the grocer.
“We all have a responsibility to take care of our planet and removing unnecessary plastic is an important way that Tesco can reduce its environmental impact,” said Sarah Bradbury, Tesco quality director. “While we are proud of this achievement, we know we have more to do and our work to tackle the impact of plastic waste will continue in 2022 and beyond.”
Tesco’s Four Rs packaging strategy acts to remove plastic where it can, reduce it where it can’t be removed, reuse more and recycle what’s left. Since its launch, the supermarket giant has removed plastic-wrapped tinned multi-packs, totalling more than 75m pieces a year, all 50m pieces of plastic wrapping from cans of branded beers and ciders, and over 100m additional lids from products including wipes, creams, yoghurts, and desserts.
As well as removing cellowrapping on single greeting cards and plastic on its Christmas boxes, significant amounts of plastic have been taken out of punnets for products such as peaches, plums, and tomatoes.
Over the last 12 months, around 500m more pieces of unnecessary plastic have been identified and removed, with the most savings including over 200m bags from Tesco.com deliveries and 42m plastic forks from prepared salad and rice bowls. Meanwhile, some 14m plastic chicken trays from whole chickens have been removed, and 48m own-brand plastic straws have been replaced with paper alternatives.
Back in December 2019, Tesco sent out a message to its greeting card publishers as it informed all suppliers the supermarket reserves the right to not stock items that use excessive or hard-to-recycle materials.
Six months earlier Tesco made a big statement about the direction it was taking on the greetings front, launching a new bespoke everyday card collection with high eco-credentials – all cards are sold naked, feature no glitter and are printed in the UK on board that is either 100% or 50% recyclable – and supporting health charities Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK under the grocer’s banner “Little helps for healthier living”.
Since then, the Four Rs strategy has seen a business-wide programme of change that assesses every piece of packaging and removes all unnecessary and non-recyclable materials with its industry-leading Red, Amber, Green list of preferred materials and formats based on UK recycling capabilities, infrastructure, and end-of-life outcomes.
Having worked with suppliers to develop more sustainable packaging solutions, Tesco has pressed them to remove all red materials as customers cannot easily recycle them in the UK.
The strategy was launched in August 2019 and the business has since reduced its annual packaging footprint by more than 6,000 tonnes, including the 1.5bn pieces of plastic. Tesco has also redesigned over 2,000 tonnes of packaging to improve recyclability and doubled the amount of recycled content in its own-label plastic packaging.
Earlier this month (February), Tesco struck up a new partnership with packaging manufacturer Berry Global to begin recycling soft plastic collected from customers and implemented a rapid scale-up in the number of soft plastic collection points to over 900 stores.
It has now collected over 850 tonnes of soft plastic to date, and is working with partners on several recycling solutions. Between 25 and 30 tonnes of collected material per month, including bread bags, fruit, vegetable, and salad packaging, is currently being sent to Berry’s recycling facility in Heanor, Derbyshire, where it is washed, scrubbed, and dried, and the resulting material turned into plastic pellets ready for manufacturing into bin liners.
William Guest, Tesco sustainability packaging manager, said: “After doing everything possible to remove and reduce plastic from our stores, we want to ensure that materials are recycled into new products and packaging. Our soft plastic collection points help to plug the gap in the country’s recycling infrastructure and, when combined with initiatives like this, we meet our customers’ ask that materials do not go to waste.”
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