As part of our Recipe for Change, we’re reducing the use of plastic in our products and accelerating our transition to a more circular economy. As part of this platform, we’re committing to:
- Leverage global partnerships and platforms to report on and achieve our Plastics & Packaging Pledge goals, including:
- By 2025, all Own Brands packaging will be 100% recyclable, reusable, or industrially compostable.
- By 2025, Own Brands plastic packaging will include 20% recycled content.
- By 2022, Own Brands packaging will include standardized recycling communications.
Our Plastics and Packaging Pledge
Ensuring our products are better for people and the planet is an important priority for Albertsons Companies. We recognize that plastic waste is a problem, and we think it’s important to be part of the solution, that’s one of the reasons we’ve developed our Plastics and Packaging Pledge.
What is the problem?
Plastic waste has become a daily concern for our customers. Plastic waste is caused by a variety of factors, including non-recyclable and/or single-use plastics, inadequate labeling on recyclable plastics, and new plastic products containing minimal recycled content. Together, these factors can lead to increased natural resource use and the creation of plastic waste that ends up in landfills and natural environments, like our oceans.
What is Albertsons Companies doing to help?
Albertsons Companies has made a plastic waste reduction pledge to advance sustainability throughout the company, starting with our operations and extensive Own Brands portfolio.
Albertsons Companies Plastics and Packaging Pledge:
- Achieve even greater sustainability of Own Brands product packaging by ensuring that 100% of packaging will be recyclable, reusable or industrially compostable by 2025
- Decrease plastic usage, with an emphasis on single-use plastics
- Own Brands plastic packaging will include 20% recycled content by 2025
- Recycle operational (non-consumer facing) plastics for use in new retail, industrial and/or consumer items
- Provide clear recycling communications on Own Brands product packaging, including the use of QR codes, by 2022. The company is working with How2Recycle to standardize its labeling system and improve the reliability, completeness, and transparency of recyclability claims.
- Source and share industry best practices with other members of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a 250-company collaborative of retailers, manufacturers, governments and education institutions focused on strengthening and advancing the business case for sustainable packaging.
Albertsons Companies’ Plastics and Packaging Pledge furthers the opportunity to reduce single-use plastic and packaging at our more than 2,200 Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Tom Thumb, Shaw’s, Star Market, ACME Markets, Randalls, Haggen, and other banner stores.
How will Albertsons Companies meet the Plastics and Packaging Pledge?
Albertsons Companies is working to achieve the Plastics and Packaging Pledge through a variety of initiatives. These efforts can be categorized into Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink. Read about some of our initiatives to meet our commitment below.
Reduce
In our manufacturing operations, we have light-weighting initiatives that reduce the amount of plastic we use to make products, such as our water bottles and milk jugs. Our teams engineered a milk jug that uses about 10% less plastic than the previous design. That’s enough plastic to reduce resin usage by the equivalent of 13 million jugs per year. We also reduce our use of virgin plastic and create an end-market for recycled plastics by introducing recycled content into items, such as our O Organics® lettuce containers.
In our stores, we’re making every effort to reduce the use of bags needed by offering reusable bags, eliminating double-bagging, and minimizing the use of bags for items that may not require one. We are members of the Beyond the Bag Initiative and are collaborating with retailers from various industries to find sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic bags. In our operations last year, we launched a program to increase the number of items our associates place in each bag to reduce the number of single-use bags used in each transaction. As a result, we used 500 million fewer single-use bags than the previous year.
Read more about some of these initiatives here: Zero Waste Milk (light-weighting); Earth Day and Reducing Plastic Waste
Reuse
In our stores, we encourage our customers to use reusable bags. They can bring these from home or purchase them in our stores. Some of our stores offer reusable shopping bags that are produced through a closed-loop process. We’ve partnered with a bag manufacturer to produce bags that are made from 65% recycled material, including a minimum of 40% post-consumer waste. Some of the film from store operations and the single-use bags that customers bring in for recycling are incorporated into the bags. These durable bags can be used up to 125 times and are machine washable.
In our operations, we utilize Reusable Plastic Containers (RPCs) and reusable totes to transport products from farms to our stores in order to reduce waste.
Read more about some of these initiatives here: America Recycles Day
Recycle
We offer plastic film and bag take back and recycling services for our customers at many of our stores, where collection bins are conveniently placed within stores entrances. In 2021, we recycled more than 25 million pounds of plastic film and bags from our distribution centers and stores. The collected film gets upcycled into long-lasting composite decking materials.
Our Southern California Division utilizes an innovative closed-loop program to recycle #5 polypropylene crates that are used to ship products such as fruits and vegetables. After the crates are emptied at the store level, the store sends the crates to be recycled into plastic pellets which are then used to manufacture new crates.
To learn more about recycling at our stores, click to see: List of accepted items; List of stores with customer recycling
Rethink
We are rethinking the way we do business by finding new markets and a second life for items in our operations, such as plastic boxes and bags.
We recently introduced more products that use eco-friendlier recycled materials, compostable items, and more sustainable raw materials. This includes our Open Nature eco-picnic products that feature BPA-free plates, bowls, cutlery, cold cups and hot cups. Each of these items is certified compostable by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), which guarantees products are tested and verified according to scientifically based standards.
We
strive to continuously improve how we communicate recyclability to our
customers. Our goal is by the end of 2022, customers will see standardized
recycling communications on all Own Brands packaging and/or through our Smart
Label QR code system. We leverage the How2Recycle labeling system across
various product categories to improve the reliability and transparency of
recyclability claims. This label helps customers know how to properly dispose
of and recycle our Own Brands product packaging to help keep plastic out of
landfills.
Read more about some of these initiatives here: Open Nature Compostables