Sainsbury’s to cut down on plastic usage following intense scrutiny from Greenpeace

02 May 2019 --- In light of mounting pressure to eliminate unnecessary and unrecyclable plastic by 2020, second largest UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has vowed to step up its sustainability game. Reportedly, it will dramatically cut down its plastic usage and facilitate a recycling movement by the proposed deadline.

The UK grocer is currently the target of a March 2019 campaign by environmental activist group Greenpeace . The supermarket came last in a 2018 survey of supermarket plastic policies – as it was found to have made the least progress on plastics reduction since January of last year.

“If supermarkets fail to cut their plastic packaging, they’re sending pollution on a conveyor belt that could end up in our rivers and seas. This has to stop. Sainsbury’s must eliminate unnecessary and unrecyclable plastic by 2020,” says Elena Polisano, Ocean Plastics Campaigner at Greenpeace UK, in the issued report.

According to the Greenpeace analysis, Sainsbury’s promised to cut 77 tonnes of plastic packaging, while Asda achieved 6,500 tonnes of reductions. At the release of this report, Sainsbury’s published no information about the number of units of plastics cut, while Marks and Spencer and Co-op both reduced their output by more than 500 million units.

Greenpeace research found:

• For those which announced how many tonnes of plastics would be cut, the average reduction was 2,217 tonnes – Sainsbury’s pledged to cut just 77 tonnes.
• For those which announced how many units of plastics would be cut, the average reduction was 266.3 million units. Sainsbury’s did not publish how many units of plastic it cut.
• On average nine plastics pledges had been made, while Sainsbury’s announced just five new measures on plastics.

Responding to this, Sainsbury’s recent claims highlight ambitions to eliminate hard-to-recycle dark colored plastics across fresh foods by the end of 2019 and entirely by March 2020. Later this year, the grocer aims to introduce a “pre-cycling” scheme, whereby customers are invited to remove unwanted primary and secondary packaging within the store and deposit the waste for recycling.

Since April 30, Sainsbury’s states that it has been removing plastic packaging from its sweetheart and savoy cabbages, cutting a further 100 tonnes of plastic packaging over the next year, as part of its drive to significantly reduce plastic usage. Additionally, the company is planning to remove all plastic packaging from Christmas crackers this year. By the end of 2019, the company hopes to eliminate the use of hard to recycle plastics (such as polystyrene and PVC), further removing 1280 tonnes of plastic across all products. 

The company has expressed further hopes to ensure that all plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. Most major supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, have committed to eliminate non-recyclable plastic packaging by as late as 2025 as part of the UK Plastics Pact.