Aldi announced this week, its commitment to a 25 per cent reduction in plastics and packaging used in stores by 2025.
Aldi has announced plans to work in partnership with suppliers to meet the ambitious but achieving targets. Aldi is committed to transparency and authenticity, and as such plans to report on its progress towards this goal, annually.
Aldi has also announced that all problematic single-use plastics, such as cotton buds and plastic plates, would be gone by the end of 2020.
“It is our ambition to reduce the amount of plastics in our stores, while in parallel stimulating Australia’s circular economy, ensuring that our business partners have commercially viable packaging options to reduce reliance on virgin materials,” Aldi Managing Director of Buying Oliver Bongardt said.
“We are completely invested in the important journey of reducing waste, and we stand committed to quantifying our progress over the coming years.”
Aldi’s commitment
Aldi’s commitments include:
- Reducing plastic packaging by 25 per cent.
- Actively reducing the amount of plastic packaging in the fresh produce range and to transit to more sustainable alternatives where possible.
- Phasing out problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics.
- Reducing or replacing difficult to recycle black plastic packaging.
- Reformulating packaging of the exclusive brands to be 100 per cent recyclable, reusable or compostable.
- Ensuring all paper and pulp-based packaging in the everyday range is FSC, PEFC or 70 per cent recycled.
- Stimulating Australian circular economy by committing to include 30 per cent recycled materials in plastic packaging.
- Using the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) on Aldi-branded products by the end of 2022.
Aldi plans to educate customers on the importance of packaging waste reduction – reduce, reuse, recycle.