'If you can scrunch it, bin it,' says Wick supermarket for new recycling scheme
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The paper was invited along to a public display at Wick's Co-op supermarket highlighting a new campaign that urges locals to recycle plastic bags, crisp packets and food wrappings at its store.
Last month, the supermarket giant launched Europe’s most extensive collection scheme for "soft plastics" – the community and shared value member pioneer for the Wick store at Angle Park, Jamie Robson, explained what it was all about.
"Today, we're talking about our summer of sustainability campaign," said Jamie yesterday (Friday, Aug 20). "We've got a plan to combat climate change and one aspect of it we're looking at is the recycling of soft plastics. This is all stuff you can't put in your household recycling – they don't take the soft stuff."
The retailer is in the process of rolling out the new scheme to all its stores which will see it become the first UK supermarket to have fully recyclable food packaging and will help tackle the confusing postcode lottery of kerbside collections. Last month, 1500 Co-op supermarkets started their own in-house soft plastic recycle schemes and a further 2300 will follow suit by November.
The initiative ensures that all the supermarket’s food packing is easily recyclable by establishing an accessible disposal route for materials which are unlikely to be collected by UK councils, including: crisp packets, bread bags, single-use carrier bags and bags-for-life, lids from ready meals and yogurt pots, biscuit wrappers and pet-food pouches.
"If you can scrunch it up, it will go in the bin," said Jamie as he showed some of the common items the store can now take in its special soft plastics recycling bin situated near the entrance. "Crisp packets are a notorious example of items that went to landfill or that people put in their own recycling bins by mistake.
"None of the [soft plastics collected] will go to landfill or be incinerated. Some supermarkets offer a facility to recycle plastic bags but we cover a whole range of items and it doesn't have to be Co-op stuff – it can come from any other supplier or supermarket."
The retailer estimates that 300 tonnes of plastic bags and food wrapping could be collected per year once the bins are fully in place. It also wishes to reassure concerned communities that the plastics collected will be recycled in the UK. The recyclable material is turned, by a company called Jayplas, into post-consumer plastic granules which are then made into useful secondary products – including: bin liners; rigid products such as buckets, and material for the construction industry – rather than flooding landfill sites, going to incineration or, being shipped overseas.
In some areas, less than 30 per cent of waste from households is currently recycled, with systems which can vary from council to council adding to the confusion. Estimates suggest that just six per cent of plastic bags and wrapping from UK households is recycled each year, while (by weight) it makes up around a fifth of all plastic packaging. The elimination of unnecessary plastics is balanced against the need to minimise food waste.
The initiative is supported by a nationwide, multi-channel marketing campaign featuring a new TV advert.
The retailer says it has always been at the forefront of removing hidden plastic and unnecessary packaging, from removing plastic stems from cotton buds before any other retailer 14 years ago, banning microbeads and, removing black (so called ‘vanity’) plastic from shelves in 2019.
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