Supermarket giant Aldi has been carbon neutral since January 2019. Now, it’s taking the next steps towards its green goals by removing plastic from egg packaging.
The discount supermarket chain is switching from plastic packaging to pulp trays on its entire egg range, making all egg packaging in Wales and England plastic-free by the end of 2021. The change will remove 900 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic per year – equivalent to twenty-four million plastic pieces.
The move is part of Aldi’s commitment to halve the amount of plastic packaging used in its stores by 2025. This will see it remove up to 74,000 tonnes (or 2.2 billion pieces) of plastic packaging from products.
Richard Gorman, Aldi’s plastics and packaging director explained:
We are proud to be amongst the first to commit to cutting plastic packaging from our entire egg range. We have a responsibility to provide customers with environmentally-sustainable options, and it’s changes like this that help to make a difference. We’ve set ambitious targets to reduce our environmental impact over the next few years, and so it’s now up to us to continue to step up our efforts to achieve these.
Aldi is on the right track towards an eco-friendly shopping experience. By 2022, it will have all own-label products recyclable, reusable, or compostable and branded items sold at Aldi by 2025.
In 2019, Greek designer George Bosnas developed an interesting compostable and plantable container to package eggs, dubbed Biopack. With a little watering, the Biopack takes about 30 days to break down entirely and sprout into green plants.
