Asda opens new sustainability store

Asda has opened a new sustainability trial store and unveiled a new plastics reduction strategy that pledges that customers will not have to pay more for greener options.

The supermarket has partnered with some of the UK’s most popular household brands including PG Tips, Vimto, Kellogg’s, Radox and Persil to create the store located in Middleton, Leeds.

The store is designed to help shoppers reduce, reuse and recycle “with ease” and Asda estimates the initiatives being trialled in Middleton will save one million pieces of plastic per year.

Asda added it will use the Middleton store to test and learn which elements of its new offer appeal most to customers and can be developed at scale to be potentially rolled out to more locations in 2021.

The new store includes the following features:

• 15 huge refill stations offering customers a selection of more than 30 household staples sold in refillable format.
• Products include a selection of different Kellogg’s cereals, PG Tips tea bags, Quaker Oats, Lavazza and Taylors of Harrogate coffee beans, Vimto cordial and Asda’s own brand rice and pasta.
• The refill zone includes popular brands of shampoo, conditioner, Persil laundry detergent, hand wash and shower gel from Unilever brands such as Simple and Radox sold in refillable format – a retail first.
• 53 fresh produce lines in total sold in loose and unwrapped format including 29 new lines such as cauliflowers, mushrooms, apples, cabbages and baby plum tomatoes. In addition, all Asda plants and flowers are sold either unwrapped or with a paper wrapping.
• Removal of the outer plastic wrapping on several popular Heinz and Asda Brand canned multipacks including beans and soups.
• Recycling facilities for items that are difficult to recycle in kerbside collections such as crisp and biscuit packets, plastic toys, cosmetic containers and toothpaste tubes.
• Asda’s first reverse vending machine for cans, plastic and glass drinks bottles and a hanger recycling facility that will be rolled out across all stores.

The store will also showcase sustainable fashion lines through George including clothing made from recycled polyester and coat hanger-less denim.

In line with the opening of its new sustainable store, Asda has also launched its new strategy for plastics and sustainability adding that it recognises that sustainable shopping “must be affordable and accessible to all customers”. 

Roger Burnley, Asda’s CEO and president said: “Today marks an important milestone in our journey as we tackle plastic pollution and help our customers to reduce, re-use and recycle. We have always known that we couldn’t go on this journey alone, so it is fantastic to work in tandem with more than twenty of our partners and suppliers, who have answered the call to test innovative sustainable solutions with us.

“This is an issue that matters greatly to our customers – our own insight tells us that more than 80% believe that supermarkets have a responsibility to reduce the amount of single use plastics in stores.”

He added: “We want to give them the opportunity to live more sustainably by offering them great product choices and value, underpinned by a promise that they won’t pay more for greener options at Asda.”