Words by Smiley Team
We all want to be shopping in greener, more environmentally friendly supermarkets – so it’s great many are taking strides to make it happen.
One of those is Asda, who published its first Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report, which shares how the shop will make it not only easier – but also cheaper – to shop sustainably. “Despite the significant challenges of the last year, we have never lost sight of the other great challenges our society faces,” Roger Burnley, the CEO of Asda, wrote in the report.
“Climate change represents a thread to human safety on an unparalleled scale and presents very material risks to our food chain. We are committed to playing our part in accelerating solutions which protect and regenerate our environment.”
For the supermarkets first ESG report, Asda spoke to more than 3,000 customers to understand what matters to them as a consumer. By doing this, they found that: affordable greener choices, reducing single-use plastic, and cutting food waste were the top three priorities.
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So how is Asda going to be implementing this? It has shared its commitment to building a “better planet”, with the following 7 introductions:
– Ensuring it’s affordable for people to shop sustainably through its ‘Greener at Asda Price’ promise
– Becoming a net zero carbon emissions business by 2040. By 2025, Asda will lower its emissions by 50%.
– Removing three billion pieces of plastic from products by 2025. There is a drive towards 100% recyclability of packaging, with the goal of a, “zero waste world where nothing goes in the bin”.
– Ensuring the top 20 commodities – such as cotton and cocoa – are all sustainably sourced by 2025
– Cutting food waste by 20% by 2025
– Delivering 120 million meals through its Fight Hunger programme (2018-2021) to communities across the UK
– Increasing the proportion of own brand products that are low in fat, sugar and salt, to 60% by 2024. Asda’s full report is available to download here.
More recently, Asda has made a huge increase to its refill product range at its flagship sustainability store. It added more than 50 new product lines to its popular refill zone in Middleton, Leeds.
The supermarket has partnered with some of the UK’s most popular consumer brands including Coca Cola, Yorkshire Tea, Napolina, Tilda, Mars and Kellogg’s to bring the new product lines to store in refillable format, as it steps up its efforts to help customers reduce, reuse or recycle plastic packaging.
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The refill zone has already proved to be extremely popular with customers since opening in October 2020, with several products outstripping packaged sales and many shoppers travelling from outside the local area to shop sustainably. Following the addition of the 50 new lines, customers will now have a choice of 76 different products in refillable format at the store.
Susan Thomas, director of commercial sustainability at Asda said: “We have always said that working in partnership with other like-minded businesses will be vital if we are to persuade people to shop more sustainably. We are very pleased to secure the backing of some of the UK’s most recognisable consumer brands which means we can offer customers even more of their favourite products in refillable format.”
