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How The Co-operative Food’s business aims to reduce waste from its operations |
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Background
The Co-operative Food is the largest independent store operator in the UK. In March 2009, The Co-operative Food began its two-year integration with Somerfield, to make it the UK’s fifth largest food retailer. The business has around 96,000 employees and 3,200 outlets.
In the 2007 Co-operative Food Ethical Policy consultation, 97% of members endorsed the Group’s commitment to reducing waste arising from its operations, increasing recycling and reducing own-brand packaging. As a result The Co-operative Food has developed a series of packaging reduction projects, and in 2007 was the first UK retailer to relaunch ‘naked’ cucumbers.
How the issue was tackled
The Co-operative Food sells over 10 million cucumbers a year. Rather than sealing cucumbers in individual plastic sleeves, whole cucumbers are now delivered to stores in cardboard boxes lined with recyclable long-life "SMART" liners.
These liners have been proven to reduce negative impacts of removing the plastic wrap such as possible moisture loss. So while we save on all that plastic wrapping, the move to “naked’ cucumbers does not impact on shelf-life.
Benefits and impacts
- By removing the plastic shrink-wrap on whole cucumbers, it is estimated the group will save eight tonnes of plastic every year
- Following a 12 week trial, their customers told them that they were pleased to see that they were taking steps to reduce packaging, and are more than happy to buy their cucumbers without the usual plastic wrap
Advice to others
- Ensure all staff are aware of packaging changes and any actions they need to take to accommodate these changes. For example, staff need to close the liners at night to prolong the shelf life of "naked cucumbers".
- Trial packaging changes before rollout to ensure they really do work. Removing shrink-wrap meant that till staff needed to look up the price for cucumbers at each sale, this problem was easily solved with the use of a small barcode sticker.
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