Iceland supermarket targets plastic neutrality through Seven Clean Seas offset program

05 Nov 2021 --- Iceland Foods is set to become the first UK supermarket to offset its entire plastic footprint, working in partnership with Singapore-based clean-up organization Seven Clean Seas.

The frozen food retailer will offset its total plastic consumption in 2022 by recovering and recycling “nature-bound” waste plastic to achieve plastic neutrality. 

PackagingInsights sat down with its Seven Clean Seas’ founder Tom Peacock-Nazil to discuss Iceland’s leading efforts on retailer environmental action.

“We’re going to be working with [Iceland] for the next five years. It’s about taking that capital and deploying it in a multitude of different projects across the globe. This could be recovering plastic from oceans and rivers to building collection and recycling centers,” he details.

According to a study from June, fishing-related pollution is the most abundant polluter globally, but only in open waters. Single-use bags, bottles, food containers and wrappers were the four most pervasive macro-litter items (making up 44% of the total items across all aquatic environments).

Plastic offsetting explained
The key to offsetting, says Peacock-Nazil, is it has to come in addition to companies’ baseline environmental sustainability goals. “Plastic credits [also] need to create an immediate impact.” 

Iceland will be the first UK supermarket to offset its remaining plastic footprint by recovering waste plastic, equal to its total 2022 plastic consumption.Within Seven Clean Seas’ operations, partners can purchase a plastic credit and the clean-up crew will intercept 1,000 kg of plastic from a marine protected area. Recovered ocean plastic is sent for sorting, separating and classification in its material sorting facility. 

Seven Clean Seas then issues a plastic credit certificate to the client. Partners can calculate their plastic footprint and decide on what kind of offsetting partnership to strike via the clean-up organization’s plastic audit.

As Iceland makes “successful reductions” to its plastic footprint, the retailer will decrease the volume of plastic credits it purchases from Seven Clean Seas. “We will of course have to make annual adjustments,” Peacock-Nazil adds.

Avoiding the greenwashing trap
Environmental lobbyists often argue plastic clean-ups are used by companies as a greenwashing tool to satiate calls for more environmental action. 

For example, Break Free From Plastic slammed Coca-Cola’s partnership with The Ocean Cleanup earlier this year as “only an end-of-pipe intervention.”

Break Free From Plastic’s Brand Audit Report highlights Coca-Cola spent US$4.24 billion in advertising and marketing in 2019, compared to just US$11 million on a river clean-up initiative that same year, suggesting the clean-up was “more like a PR stunt.” 

“I feel confident [Iceland’s partnership] is not just a greenwashing campaign. If this [plastic offsetting] were the only thing [Iceland] were doing, then that would be linked to greenwashing.” 

Iceland’s tactics
Peacock-Nazil has long been “a fan” of Iceland’s environmental mitigation commitments. He shares his admiration for the supermarket’s work on palm oil reduction in its products. “I’ve seen the devastation in my father’s homeland, Malaysia, first hand, and they [Iceland] took a real stance.”

More relevant to Seven Clean Seas’ work, Iceland pledges to become plastic-free across its own-label packaging by 2023. The supermarket also increased reusables by 60% in 2019.

Seven Clean Seas provides waste pickers with proper jobs and financial safety nets as part of its social approach to sustainability.Environmental campaigners celebrated the news with PackagingInsights when Iceland became the first UK supermarket chain to publish detailed data about its plastic footprint last year.

Iceland has reported a 29% overall reduction in plastic packaging across its own label range since its base year of 2017. To date, 3,794 metric tons of plastic have now been eradicated.

Managing director Richard Walker flags Iceland may not achieve its target by its own deadline due to pandemic setbacks and a lack of commercially viable innovation. However, “we remain focused on our target and will not stop until we have delivered what we set out to,” he says. 

Social sustainability
Walker is consequently calling for an internationally standardized system of accounting and crediting to ensure the future integrity of “nature-bound” plastic recovery and offsetting.

Peacock-Nazil takes the concept of “sustainability” one step further. “A lot of people see plastic as an environmental issue but it’s also a social injustice. Seven Clean Seas has hired previous workers in the tourism industry who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 as waste collectors.”

“They are on formalized contracts, which is uncommon in waste management where there is a big informal culture. It’s kind of toxic; these people sadly earn between US$1-$8 a day. They don’t have pensions or maternity leave and there is lot of child labor – these things we take for granted.” 

Peacock-Nazil’s team offers formalized contracts and “proper” wages. “There has got to be a focus on that element [in the sustainability debate] as well,” he adds.

Seven Clean Seas has recovered more than 185,000 kg of marine plastic pollution since its founding in 2018.“It’s not just collecting and recycling plastic in nature but also who we are employing and how we are employing them. How are we making their lives better, and how can we help them not be a waste collector forever.” 

This year, PackagingInsights explored a waste picker income program launched by Dow and Mr. Green Africa in Kenya, highlighting how additional income for informal workers can incentivize better collection of flexible plastic waste.

Offsetting not a plastic panacea 
However, Peacock-Nazil stresses plastic offsetting will never be the solution to ending plastic pollution. 

“It’s a good tool and mechanism along the way, but we’re in a pretty dire situation. The level of plastic leakage is so phenomenally high in so many parts of the world. That’s often down to a lack of investment in waste management infrastructure and rural island communities.” 

Ultimately, plastic offsetting should put Peacock-Nazil out of business. “But that’s not a bad thing. If we ever get to that point in our lifetime, then it’s a job well done.”

By Anni Schleicher