Asda opens new sustainability store

Supermarket giant has opened its new sustainability trial store and unveiled a new plastics reduction strategy with a promise that customers will not pay more for greener options.

In partnership with the UK’s most popular household brands including PG Tips, Vimto, Kellogg’s, Radox and Persil, Asda has created a trail store located in Middleton, Leeds.

The store is designed to help shoppers reduce, reuse and recycle with ease, and Asda “estimates the numerous initiatives being trailed in Middleton will save one million pieces of plastic per year,” said the supermarket.

The Middleton store will be used to test and learn which elements of Asda’s new offer appeal most to customers and can be further developed at scale to be potentially rolled out to more locations in 2021.

The new store includes 15 refill stations for dried foods and toiletries; 53 fresh produce lines sold in loose and unwrapped format; removal of the outer plastic wrapping on several popular Heinz and Asda Brand canned multipacks including beans and soups; recycling facilities for items that are difficult to recycle, reverse vending machine for cans, plastics and glass bottles; sustainable fashion lines; a new community zone for pop ups and partnerships with charities; and a partnership with Pre-Loved, a vintage wholesaler.

Asda has also launched ‘Greener at Asda Price’, a national price promise that loose and unwrapped products will not cost more than wrapped equivalents.

The company is also committed to generating zero carbon emissions by 2040, reducing waste by 50 percent and having a net regenerative impact on nature no later than 2050.

It has also committed to introduce over 40 refillable products by 2023 and invest in 50 classed loop and circular projects by 2030, working closely with waste management companies, recyclers and product developers.

“This is an issue that matter greatly to our customers – out own insight tells us that more than 80 percent believe that supermarkets have a responsibility to reduce the amount of single use plastics in stores,” said Roger Burnley, Asda’s CEO and President.

Nina Schrank, lead plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “Asda’s new sustainability store reflects what people are looking for – the opportunity to go plastic free. By offering innovative refill stations, loose fruit and vegetables and plenty of sustainably sourced household goods, they have bought what used to be a niche shopping experience into the mainstream.”

In 2018, Asda set a weight-based target of 15 percent reduction in plastic packaging by 2021, with the company removing over 9,300 tonnes of plastic from their own brand products since then. Now it has introduced an additional commitment to remove 3bn piece of plastic from own-brand products by 2025.