Page 15 Packaging, waste and recycling


Our packaging obligations
Under the terms of the Packaging Waste Regulations, we are obliged to recover and recycle up to 80% (depending on the material) of our product packaging. We fully support this legislation, and contribute over £1 million a year towards a recycling compliance scheme that invests in kerbside collections and public recycling centres so that customers can recycle the packaging they take home. The legislation has driven improvements in packaging recovery rates from 6% in 1997 to over 60% today.


Carrier bags
The total number of bags given away by retailers fell by roughly a billion last year, but that's still 12.4 billion free bags (or 233 per person), 94% of which came from supermarkets. Although bags represent just 0.3% of landfilled waste, the Chancellor has announced the intention to introduce legislation forcing supermarkets to charge for plastic carrier bags, if voluntary action to encourage customers to reuse and recycle bags does not bring about a significant reduction.

As a signatory to a national Voluntary Code of Practice on Carrier Bags in February 2007, we have been working with the Government funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and other retailers to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags by 25% by the end of 2008. Our efforts have included:

> promoting our Waitrose Bag for Life – which costs 10 pence and is replaced free of charge when damaged or worn out, with returned bags being recycled into 'plaswood' furniture, among other things, which we donate to good causes
> selling a range of reusable jute bags including designs for Quick Check self-scan users
> trialling bags made from 33% recycled material that carry stronger messaging about reuse and recycling
> pilot schemes for bag-free 'green tills' and making our Saffron Walden shop completely carrier-bag-free for two weeks
> introducing prominent communication to customers in every shop prompting them to reuse their existing bags.

As a result of these activities and an increased focus on training of in-store Partners, we have seen a reduction in carrier bag usage of nearly 30% this year (a reduction of 40 million bags). Although feedback on green tills and bagless shops was positive, they have not brought the sustained reductions we needed to meet our targets. We will continue to focus on Partner training and customer awareness which in trials have shown reductions in carrier bag use of between 45% and 60%.We are optimistic that we can achieve an overall 50% reduction by May 2009.


Encouraging customers
To help our customers to recycle more, we clearly identify the materials used in our own-label packaging where possible. We have also reviewed our back-of-pack packaging information and issued revised guidelines to ensure our packaging information is clear, consistent and easy to understand.
As part of these guidelines, we have worked with WRAP, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and some of the retail signatories to the Courtauld Commitment to agree a standard recycling labelling scheme for packaging. This voluntary initiative will replace the current array of recycling symbols and messages with a single RecycleNow logo and an icon to indicate whether the packaging is:

> 'widely recycled' – recycled by over 65% of local authorities
> 'check locally' – recycled by 20–65% of local authorities
> 'not currently recycled' – recycled by under 20% of local authorities.

Our aim is to introduce the new labelling across all our own-brand products by 2009.


In 2007,Waitrose became the exclusive supermarket stockist of organic milk sold in an 'eco-pak'. Produced by a co-operative of 20 organic dairy farmers, the milk is sold under the CalonWen label and was trialled in stores in London and Wales. The pouch uses 75% less plastic than the equivalent bottle and with the recent launch of Waitrose Select Farm milk pouches, they are now available in every store.

(picture of organic milk in 'eco-pak')

(Picture of a Waitrose 'bag for life')

We handed out nearly 4 million Bags for Life last year, an increase of 63%. The bag has saved between 50 and 80 million plastic bags a year since it was introduced in 1997, and will soon be made from 100% recycled material.