Reducing Plastic in the Environment

The banning of plastic shopping bags from all types of stores from the middle of next year will lead to greater changes in our shopping habits. One of my earliest memories is doing the weekly shop at a Woolworths in Mosgiel where all our groceries were packed into paper bags and often carried out to the carpark. It reminded me that the management of supermarkets and consumer goods companies has taken on quite a change in recent times – and there’s more to come as consumer goods companies look at what more can be done to reduce packaging and particularly the use of single-use plastics.

It's not all straightforward, of course, because not only do consumer goods companies strive to the right thing by the environment, they also have to work hard meeting consumers’ continuing demand for convenience in a seemingly time-poor world. 

Recently by Greenpeace on the “plastic pollution pandemic” and the part food and grocery companies play in it. It was an interesting read.

They sent questions to the world’s nine biggest food and grocery companies, which all have operations in New Zealand (and which are members of the Food & Grocery Council): Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft-Heinz, Mars, Mondelez, Nestle, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. Between them, their products dominate our supermarket shelves.

While their survey answers showed an impressive list of activities and commitments to reduce plastic right across the board, it was disappointing that a bit more credit couldn't have been given to the work being done.

Many NZFGC companies, and the industry as a whole, are constantly trying to find a balance between reducing their environmental footprint and meeting the needs of consumers looking for convenient, safe, fresh food and other grocery products.

The companies highlighted in the report are actually leaders working on recycling, reusability, and compostable packaging.

For example, seven of the companies have committed to 100% recyclability, reusability and compostability of all their packaging by 2025, while the other two are 90% by 2020 and 100% by 2030. Many are committed to using 50% recycled content in their packaging by dates ranging between 2020-2030 and replacing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of packaging by using lighter materials.

In New Zealand we have many local examples of this too. Turners & Growers are moving all their tomatoes from plastic punnets into cardboard boxes, Procter & Gamble has a new range of shampoos in recycled plastic containers, and Earthwise is selling laundry powder in containers made out of old milk bottles. I read at the weekend that Fonterra has been taking plastic milk bottles and turning them into fence posts for dairy farms. There are so many more current examples and others in the pipeline.

Everyone in the industry understands the need to minimise packaging, but common sense needs to be applied to meet the realities of modern life as well.

Consumers want convenience, but they also want safe, fresh food and other groceries, because not everything can be put in cardboard, glass, or straight into a jute shopping bag. Short of turning back the clock to when everybody had their own home garden and bought everything in bulk, it’s going to be very hard to achieve a packaging-free world, but we will keep doing our best to try to make big reductions and work hard to take consumers with us.