Metro.co.uk is calling on the UK’s major supermarkets to do more to help save the planet, after an investigation revealed a number of promising plans for the future – but limited action now.
As part of our new green series #Just1Change, which launches today, we have told major chains that it is ‘Time to Shelve’ environmentally damaging practices and take game-changing steps to combat the climate crisis.
A survey informing our campaign highlighted widespread action to deal with plastic pollution but found that only one company – Co-op – was happy to commit to cutting ties with toxic suppliers.
Various chains are praised for progress in a number of areas, but eco groups blasted what they saw as a lack of action across the board on reducing animal product sales and supermarket links to deforestation.
The ‘Time to Shelve’ campaign – backed by the Green Party, and climate authorities such as Greenpeace, Feedback and Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute – saw Metro.co.uk ask nine supermarkets a series of questions, based on what our readers wanted to know.
All of the companies, barring Aldi, provided mostly comprehensive responses to your questions and outlined the positive initiatives they are undertaking to ease the environmental emergency.
A handy checklist gives you the basics but not the full story – with unanswered questions getting the red cross treatment.
In a number of additional areas, there are concerns that the sector is ‘is by no means doing enough’ and Metro.co.uk is calling for the chains to go further, particularly on issues like making seasonal fruit and vegetables more attractive to consumers and reducing meat and dairy consumption – something food and environment organisation Feedback says needs urgent attention.
Its executive director, Carina Millstone, told us: ‘Retailers need to wake up to the realities of the climate crisis and what it means for the meat and dairy they sell. The fact is, meat and dairy are one of the biggest drivers of supermarket emissions – emissions they’ve promised to halve – yet many are only now starting to talk about promoting plant-based options on a par with meat ones.’
With some 87% of UK consumers regularly shopping for their food at supermarkets – and the stores having a huge carbon footprint – experts have stressed that corporate giants bear a huge responsibility on environmental issues.
Metro.co.uk wants to see them shelve any practices which worsen plastic pollution or contribute to food waste – and to bring forward positive schemes – many of which have already been trialled or promised in future.
In a series of four articles – coinciding with the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow – we look in depth at what your supermarket is doing, comparing Aldi to Lidl; Sainsbury’s to Tesco; Waitrose to Marks & Spencer; and seeing how Morrisons, Asda and Co-op shape up.
While many of the stores appeared to be conscious of the health benefits of moving away from animal-based diets, they had little to say about the wider environmental benefits of doing so and continue to run meat and dairy promotions. Feedback has ranked Co-op best, and Lidl worst, on this issue.
Time to Shelve: The 10 things you asked supermarkets to do
Replace plastic bags at till with paper ones
Remove all plastic packaging on fresh fruit and veg
Swap plastic milk bottles for glass
Stop selling multipacks in plastic shrinkwrap
Only use energy efficient light bulbs
Reduce usage outside of shop hours
Swap open refridgeration units for closed ones
Turn down the aircon
More options to buy food individually rather than multipacks
Reduce food waste
The problem with plastic
The supermarkets appear to be more proactive on plastic, however, with Tesco implementing a number of progressive initiatives on tinned multipacks and recycling soft plastic packaging.
Single-use bags are largely a thing of the past, but only Morrisons and Co-op are removing plastic bags from the till entirely or planning to phase them out imminently.
Nina Schrank, Head of Plastics for Greenpeace UK, warned that the combined plastic footprint of the supermarkets actually increased by 1% between 2017 and 2019 – calling for a system change and greater ambition.
She said: ‘The supermarket sector is by no means doing enough.
‘Bags and plastic packaging are the deadliest items in the sea for wildlife, so a good place to start would be for them to ban all plastic bags, including bags for life and fruit and vegetable bags too.
‘Collection points where you can put bags, crisp packets and other soft plastic are popping up in many supermarkets, but why is it just Lidl who promise that all of this will actually be recycled into other products?’
Some readers told us that they wanted to see plastic bags replaced by paper ones and – despite Morrisons saying it will do so – other chains provided reasonable explanations for why they do not believe paper bags are necessarily a better alternative.
That included increased energy, water and material usage to create them, compared with recycled plastic, and limited durability.
Lidl and Co-op are rolling out compostable carriers, which can later be used as food caddy liners.
Similarly, our audience mentioned the idea of switching from plastic to glass milk bottles, and – while most stores are not planning to do so – they have looked into the idea and concluded that glass could be more environmentally damaging, partly due of the additional weight created during transportation.
Despite this, Morrisons has been trialling glass milk bottles at two stores, in partnership with local producers, and wants to roll out similar initiatives elsewhere.
Reuse and refill
Meanwhile, the supermarkets are all piloting promising reuse and refill schemes, notably at Asda, Waitrose, and Tesco, but are yet to roll them out en masse – something Metro.co.uk would like to see them do sooner.
Praising Aldi and Sainsbury’s commitment to reduce plastic by 50% by 2025, Greenpeace’s plastic expert Ms Schrank said other chains now had to follow suit, and Tesco and Asda ‘need to be the fastest to move’.
‘Reusable, refillable packaging is the key to reducing plastic, and we need to see 25% of packaging met by reuse and refill systems, across the board,’ she said.
Other notable future plans include Sainsbury’s, M&S and Co-op’s target of being net zero by 2040.
Backing up these ambitions with action is the crucial next step.
Time to Shelve: What the supermarkets need to do now
As part of Time to Shelve, Metro.co.uk is asking all nine supermarkets to pledge to continue shelving any bad practices that impact our fight against climate change. We also ask that they take our readers – their customers – comments seriously and work harder towards finding ways to make shopping a greener experience.
This includes:
- Cutting ties with suppliers who refuse to do more to help the environment
- Finding ways to reduce meat and dairy consumption
- Work harder to reduce food waste
- Lose all plastic packaging from fresh fruit and veg – or offer plastic-free alternatives
- Removing plastic shrinkwrap and other unnecessary packaging from all products
- Promoting seasonal fruit and veg sales
- Bringing forward future environmental targets – including large-scale reuse and/or refill initiatives
Deforestation, meat and dairy
M&S says it is carbon neutral and is the only supermarket to have a commitment to zero deforestation in palm oil and soy sourcing by 2027 – an issue Greenpeace is particularly concerned about.
Anna Jones, head of food and forests at Greenpeace UK, said: ‘Metro.co.uk has given supermarkets a chance to show customers they get it and are pulling their weight. But when it comes to ending deforestation by dropping forest destroyers and reducing sales of factory farmed meat and dairy – a system that relies on animal feed grown on once pristine forests in Brazil – all fall far short.’
She compared Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Waitrose favourably with the other chains, for respectively being the only ones to reference deforestation, cut toxic suppliers and hint at tackling meat reduction.
However, Ms Jones continued: ‘Pledges to sell more plant based foods are a start but without targets to reduce meat sales they’re just food shops selling more food.’
And on net zero, she added: ‘(These) pledges could be just another way for supermarkets to hide the truth if they’re only about offsetting [by, for example, planting trees to “offset” other emissions].
‘Forests are still bulldozed, Indigenous Peoples persecuted and killed, wildlife decimated, but it’s all deemed acceptable if money is thrown towards nature elsewhere.’
Multipacks and food waste
There was limited action on reducing the use of multipacks, a problem responsible for countless tonnes of shrink wrap plastic, while Asda, M&S and Aldi were unable to tell us how many tonnes of food waste they produce each year.
Slamming supermarket efforts, Feedback’s Ms Millstone said: ‘Most of these policies are “same old”, and certainly not enough to tackle the food that still goes to waste, not including the mountains of waste in supermarkets’ supply chains, including on farms.
‘Real action to help shoppers waste less would include dropping misleading date labels which cause unnecessary waste in homes, and finally getting to grips with the way their business model drives waste on farms.’
Combined, the chains that did answer our question said they produced around 150,000 tonnes of surplus food – with Tesco highest on nearly 56,000 tonnes, compared to Waitrose (a significantly smaller supermarket) on less than 6,000.
Commenting on the wider environmental impact of the sector, Lisa Schipper, from Oxford University’s prestigious Environmental Change Institute, told Metro.co.uk: ‘Supermarkets appear to realise that they play an important role in helping the consumer be environmentally friendly and that they have potentially massive carbon footprints.
‘It’s important to keep in mind however that these small changes individually are only a drop in the bucket and it’s only when you have a holistic coherent strategy that the environmental impact will be reduced.’
How did your favourite supermarket do?
To find out how each store got on, click here for the results:
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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