Big Changes Are Happening In The Supermarkets

As a child I remember going shopping with my mother or grandmother and putting fruit and vegetables into paper bags and then plastic bags came in. We are going back to the good old days it seems.

Everyone is talking about it and whenever you go in, or past, a supermarket, it is right there in front of you – plastic is rapidly leaving the supermarkets.

Although it seems like Woolworths is leading the charge with it’s commitment that as of 20 June there will be no single use plastic bags in the checkouts, the rest of the chains have been, or are, doing that and other things beside.

Woolies have now also said that plastic straws and plastic wrapped fruit and vegetables are also about to disappear as well.This will help reduce the 134 million plastic straws eventually ending up as rubbish.

Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci said; “In the last year we have seen a shift towards more sustainable attitudes from our customers and the momentum is growing, with recent research showing a 15% increase in Australians now saying that taking care of the planet is important to them.”

Although the removal of the plastic bags and fruit and vegetable wrapping by Woolies and the other chains have been strongly supported, it is the plastic straws which are causing concern by some in our community. There are some people who need to use a straw to drink for medical or health reasons, and these people are going to be heavily impacted by this commitment. There are alternatives however, apparently the old time wax coated paper straws will be making a come back and there are now recyclable collapsible metal straws which can be attached to key rings and carried wherever people go.

The supermarkets are not leaving us  having to hold all of our groceries in our hands to go out to the car there have been for some time reusable (and in most cases recyclable and made from recycled material) bags for sale at the checkouts and now at least one of them is going to be giving the money from sales of those bags to Landcare to help with the planting of trees and assisting the community with environmental projects.

It is not only the plastic in store which is the focus of the retailers, the supliers of the store branded products are also under pressure to remove plastic as part of the packaging. Woolies alone is working on having plastic removed from 80 product lines within the year.

Waste reduction is now, thankfully, one of the big commitments from the retailers and both Woolworths and Coles plan to have waste diversion programs in place  by the end of 2020. Food will be going to organisations to distribute to those in need.

The new Packaging Coalition Roundtable is being set up to move us toward what is called a circular econmomy – in other words a society which reuses what it makes to prevent waste. The retaliers, government, members of the Australian Packaging Covenant,and  large industry companies will all be members, to ensure a consistent national approach.