Middleton, Leeds, in the UK has been graced with a brand-new Asda sustainability store. It’s loaded with refill stations for household essentials such as cereal, coffee, tea, shampoo, laundry detergent, as well as loose and unwrapped fruits and vegetables. There are also recycling points throughout the store, and flowers sold in paper wrapping instead of plastic. The supermarket hopes the new outlet will encourage customers to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
We've opened our first ever sustainability store, at Asda Middleton in Leeds, where we're offering a range of new and innovative ways to reduce and remove plastic packaging, including 15 huge refill stations offering customers a selection of more than 30 household staples. pic.twitter.com/hlmFRqahtw
— Asda (@asda) October 20, 2020
That one store alone should save about a million pieces of plastic from being used yearly. The initiative is part of Asda’s pledge to reduce waste by 50% and become carbon neutral by 2040.
Asda’s chief executive, Roger Burnley, said:
Today marks an important milestone in our journey as we tackle plastic pollution and help our customers to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We have always known that we couldn’t go on this journey alone, so it is fantastic to work in tandem with more than 20 of our partners and suppliers who have answered the call to test innovative sustainable solutions with us.
Big brands are involved, including PG Tips, Persil, Radox, and Kellogg’s. Their products will be available at the refill stations where customers can fill up containers they’ve brought from home or reusable containers they get at the store.
Canned products from Asda’s brand, and others, including Heinz, will be sold without outer plastic packaging.
Fifty-three fresh produce items are being sold loose.
For items that are complicated to recycle – such as chips packets, cosmetics packaging, toothpaste tubes, and plastic toys – points will be granted. Furthermore, the supermarket has launched the Greener at Asda Price – a promise that the price for produce there will cost the same or less than the packaged versions across all its stores.
The sustainability store will also feature a community zone designed for collaborations with charities. The first organization to use it will be The Salvation Army. It will run a three-month “drop and shop” program where customers can donate unwanted items.
Of course, environmental groups are praising the new store. A lead plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK, Nina Schrank, 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, all under one roof. We hope that this store is the first of many; we need to see so much more of this from across the supermarket sector.
The senior ocean campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency, Christina Dixon, agreed, adding:
Asda’s sustainability store shows real vision for a shopping experience that reduces plastic packaging and protects our planet, while also demonstrating that checking out on plastic doesn’t have to come with a hefty price tag.
Asda also launched a new strategy for sustainability and plastics, at the same time it opened the sustainability store. The system involves a commitment to introduce more than 40 refillable products by 2023 and invest in 50 circular projects by 2030. It will be working with product developers, recyclers, and waste management companies on circular projects.
There will likely be more sustainability stores to come, and standard Asda supermarkets could transition to become sustainability stores too. Asda says it will use the Middleton location as the test and learn project. Whichever elements of the supermarket are most appealing to customers could be rolled out across more sites in 2021.
