Page 13 Packaging, waste and recycling

Packaging, waste and recycling
According to the Environment Agency, the UK produces 330 million tonnes of waste a year and three-quarters of the UK's unrecycled waste goes to landfill. This has a huge impact on the environment, from unsightly litter to sprawling landfill sites. It is also a financial burden; for instance, the 22,000 tonnes of waste Waitrose generates costs us about £2.2 million a year to dispose of. With landfill space running out and the fact that sites produce methane, a greenhouse gas with 20 times more impact on climate change than CO2, we need to act now.


Ambition
To divert waste away from landfill by reducing, reusing, recycling or recovering energy from all our commercial waste and packaging.


Targets
> Recycle 75% of all Waitrose waste by year-end 2012
> Eliminate packaging growth by year-end 2008
> Reduce own-brand packaging by 2013 on a like-for-like basis, compared with 2005, and work with suppliers to encourage similar reductions
> Apply packaging recyclability labelling to own-brand products by year-end 2009
> Help to reduce the overall environmental impact of carrier bags by 25% by year-end 2008
> Continue to explore ways to reduce food waste and provide practical information in-store and online to raise customer awareness of this issue
> Continue anaerobic digestion trials


36% Reduction in packaging consumption relative to sales since 2000


More information can be found on www.waitrose.com
More information and detailed data can be found on www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk

See the John Lewis CSR report for more information on our sister company


Packaging
Doing the right thing for the long term is one of our founding principles and environmental sustainability is key to this approach. We're addressing a whole range of issues in this area, not least actively reducing packaging and encouraging our customers to reduce their use of plastic bags.

Packaging is essential for the integrity, safety and usability of our products, but over packaging has environmental and financial costs. Waitrose is responsible for 86% of the 117,000 tonnes of packaging a year used by the Partnership.

Waitrose is a signatory to the Courtauld Commitment, a voluntary agreement between the Government-funded Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP) and major UK grocery organisations that supports less packaging and food waste ending up in household bins. Collectively, we have now achieved the first Courtauld target of delivering zero packaging growth, despite a sharp increase in sales.

Waitrose remains committed to eliminating unnecessary packaging and balancing reductions in packaging with ensuring our products remain protected both in transit and on the shelf. This can be seen in the gradual move towards transporting fresh fish in vacuum packs rather than polystyrene. Waitrose also looks for opportunities for reuse, which is why we use returnable transit packaging for around 41 million trips annually through our supply chain.


Our latest initiatives include:
> reducing the weight of the cardboard sleeve of our breaded fish by 33%, salad bag film by 14% and Delicatezze range plastic pots by 20% by removing the lid
> strawberry punnets and lids now made from 100% recycled polyethylene teraphthalate (PET)
> removing all the cardboard from our 2008 range of Easter eggs and using plastic with 40% recycled PET.