A day after Tesco announced the introduction of reusable packaging in its stores, Morrisons has confirmed plans to create “zero waste” supermarkets.
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.
The trial will involve 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 – an issue that has led to increased pollution of the natural environment in some countries.
Shop waste including soft and hard plastics, cardboard, food waste, green waste, PPE, plus tins, cans and foils will be sorted by warehouse workers and collected by a range of specialist waste companies for recycling.
Meanwhile, customer waste will include hard-to-recycle soft plastics like confectionery wrappers and pet food pouches, hard plastics such as yoghurt tubs, mixed materials like crisp tubes and coffee pods, specialist products like 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: “We’re not going to reach our ambitious targets through incremental improvements alone. 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 successful, the concept could be rolled out to all the retailer’s 498 stores as part of a plan to recycle all its waste.
Alison Bramfitt, Group Packaging Manager at Nestlé UK & Ireland, commented: “At Nestlé, we’re dedicated to driving a more circular system by reducing our use of virgin plastics by one third, and ensuring all of our packaging is reusable or recyclable by 2025. We are committed to providing solutions for recycling hard-to-recycle materials, such as film and coffee pods, so we’re delighted to be part of this initiative.”
