Supermarkets fail to shine in packaging study to find the greenest of them all

The Times
February 17, 2009
Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor

It prides itself on being one of Britain’s greenest supermarkets, but when it comes to packaging, Waitrose scores surprisingly badly.
A study by the Local Government Association found that Waitrose had the heaviest packaging per shopping basket, although Lidl, the German-owned budget retailer, had the worst record on recyclable materials.
The report said that while the total weight of supermarket food packaging had reduced in the past two years, almost 40 per cent still cannot be easily recycled.
An analysis of the typical shopping basket at eight supermarkets by the British Market Research Bureau found that Sainsbury’s had the highest proportion of packaging that could easily be recycled (66 per cent) while Lidl had the lowest (58 per cent). Waitrose had the heaviest packaging (803g) and Tesco the lightest (646g).

The analysis makes it difficult to tease out the worst overall offender on packaging, but Waitrose had the third-lowest percentage of recyclable packaging (62 per cent), behind Asda (60 per cent) and Lidl.
The contents of the typical shopping basket included fruit and vegetables, minced beef, chicken breasts, lamb chops, salmon, Stilton, eggs, pizza, crisps, cookies and staples such as sugar, tea, jam, bread and sunflower spread.
The LGA said that excessive packaging was undermining householders’ efforts to recycle more. It called on supermarkets to contribute to the cost of processing waste.
Landfill now costs councils £32 for every tonne of rubbish they throw away, which will rise to £48 a tonne by 2010. At the current rate of landfill, this will mean councils paying an extra £360 million in landfill taxes over the next two years, the LGA said. Councils will spend an estimated £1.8 billion on landfill tax between 2008 and 2011, it said.
Margaret Eaton, the chairman of the LGA, said that families were fed up with having to carry so much packaging home from the supermarket. “At a time when we’re in recession and shoppers are feeling the pinch, we have to move on from a world that tolerates clingfilmed coconuts and shrink-wrapped tins of baked beans,” Mrs Eaton said. “If we had less unnecessary packaging, it would cut costs and lead to lower prices at the tills.
When packaging is sent to landfill, it’s expensive for taxpayers and damaging for the environment. If retailers create unnecessary rubbish, they should help taxpayers by paying for it to be recycled.”
Waitrose said yesterday that it had cut the weight of its product packaging by a third since 2001, and insisted that some of the LGA report was misleading. The supermarket said that the report “fails to use accurate comparisons: a 500g tomato punnet at Waitrose is compared with a 250g punnet at most other stores.
“Around 20 per cent of our fish and meat sales are over the counter but this study chose to only compare the prepacked option, which produces a higher but misleading figure.”
Waitrose also complained that the report had failed to highlight the store’s greener efforts. When the study was carried out, milk was purchased in a plastic bottle, but all Waitrose stores now offered milk in an eco-pouch that used 75 per cent less plastic than an equivalent bottle, it said. Waitrose own-label Easter eggs were also sold in packaging that was both recycled and recyclable, the supermarket said.
The report acknowledged that there had been a big improvement in labelling of supermarket products generally since previous reports, with many items showing details about whether packing is widely recyclable, recyclable in some areas where facilities exist, or not recyclable. However, it said: “There is still a long way to go for some retailers to provide sufficient information for consumers about recycling and there is scope for improvement among all retailers in the amount of packaging made from recycled materials.”