Recycling by Coles and Woolies

There is an ongoing price tension between the grocery giants in Australia. It seems there is now a battlefield that has emerged from the supermarkets, and that is plastic.

Woollies and Coles are going head to head, looking to go beyond the price and give customers environmentally friendly reasons to walk through their doors. They have since unveiled a raft of sustainability responsibilities. Working with the World Environment Day, it seems Woollies have hosted a sustainability forum located at their headquarter in Belle Vista. This was done in order to detail the new programs that are getting designed to motivate customers into a trend of green living.

Coles not long followed suit with their own announcements ahead of what seems to be an exciting month for both Coles and Woolies, working towards executing their single-use plastic bags around all networks.

Woollies will pull out 3.4 million bags from the stores and hope that within a month; they will have dedicated plastic bottle recycling bins placed all around the store portfolio. Hopefully, this will motivate their customers to bring their waste back. Woolworths is also aiming at ceasing stock of the 140 million plastic straws that are selling in their stores yearly as part of the worldwide effort aimed towards a globular market on plastic. Woollies have stated that we need to work together to achieve what we desperately need to, it’s all about the collective action from everyone.
The supermarket giant is making a move to reduce general food waste and improve sourcing practices while bringing in more uses for its renewable energy.

Woolworths is planning to roll out solar panels to their stores and has implanted a cloud-based energy platform to monitor and track their power usage across the network.

The balancing act

Both Woolworths and coles are committed to reducing plastic within their stores; this includes the packaging of meat, fruit and veg products.
Woolworths is running a trial to reduce their plastic on the veg and fruit products within the next year. In an effort to address the mounting consumer criticism that has come from the amount of packaging found in the fresh aisle.

Implementing a green vision

Woollies’ managing director Claire Peters said education programs designed to help customers waste less, alongside explaining its quality predicament to shoppers would form part of future efforts to reduce in-store plastic waste.

Woolworths has provided two delivery options for buyers. You can have groceries delivered in reusable or tote bags or pay a little extra where they come and unload to your bench. There is a recycling depot and a program for these bags where shoppers can return the bags that are worn or torn and receive a free replacement.
There is talk of further plans to bring in even more recycled materials and introduce in-store soft plastic recycling in all stores.

Coles have made a promise to halve the food waste from their supermarkets and donate what food doesn’t sell but is still edible from each of their Australian supermarkets. There is no doubt both supermarkets are trying their best to become greener and be an overall better environmentally-friendly supermarket. It seems there is no stopping them. We wonder what they will come out with next, perhaps something better with a more powerful punch.