 Background
ASDA offers shoppers everything from carrots to computers. We operate 338 stores (including nine ASDA Living and 12 stand-alone George Clothing stores) that primarily sell groceries and apparel. The stores also sell CDs, books, videos, and items for the home.
Our progress towards sending Zero Waste to Landfill by 2010 has significantly reduced our stores’ waste footprint. However, a major concern for our customers is the amount of unnecessary packaging waste they were generating as a result of supermarket shopping.
How the issue was tackled
Having identified the redesign of our own brand packaging as an opportunity to significantly reduce the amount of waste produced by our customers, we set about formulating an approach that would gain the maximum of environmental benefit while delivering cost savings to the business. This allowed us to maintain our everyday low prices.
We decided that within 12 months we should:
- Redesign all our own brand packaging
- Reduce our own brand food packaging weight by 25%
In order to achieve this, the redesign of all our packaging was based around three simple principles:
- Remove - Wherever possible, the retail packaging should be eliminated completely and the product sold loose. Unnecessary components should be removed
- Reduce - Packaging weight and volume of pack should be kept to a minimum. The pack should be ‘right-sized’
- Recycle - Packaging should be recyclable and where possible contain recycled material
Benefits and impacts
The primary measurable benefit of the redesign of our packaging has been the direct resource savings achieved. Redesigns so far include:
- The reduction of packaging on our SmartPrice cereals
- Reducing the thickness of the glass jars that hold our coffee, pasta sauces and organic sauces
- Exchanging plastic for pulp
- Plastic film for netting on our organic fruit and vegetables range
We have removed 23 tonnes of Virgin Plastic and 9 tonnes of Carton Board from our products.
The lighter and smaller product packaging means that we are using less fuel getting our own brand goods onto our shelves, and, once there, the same products take up less space. Thus the simple redesign of our own brand packaging has improved the operational efficiency of both our supply chain and our stores.
By making our packaging lighter and more environmentally friendly, while making savings that can then be passed on to our customers, we are helping our customers to live more sustainable lifestyles at no extra cost.
Advice to others
- Minimising packaging brings benefits well beyond direct resource savings - it drives supply-chain and operational efficiency, benefits the environment, and is of significant reputational benefit
- Consider more than just your own operations - try to help your clients, suppliers and customers operate and live more sustainably
- Environmental benefits can go hand in hand with cost savings – think resource efficiency
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