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 (achieved).
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?
As part of our Plastics and Packaging Pledge, Albertsons Companies is committed to improving the recyclability, reusability, and compostability of our Own Brands product packaging. Our Own Brands consist of trusted household names that are exclusive to our stores, such as O Organics®, Lucerne®, Open Nature®, Signature Select®, Primo Taglio®, debi lilly design™, Waterfront Bistro®, Soleil®, ready meals®, and Value Corner®.
Our Own Brands primary plastic packaging footprint is approximately 68,000 metric tons annually. This baseline includes the plastic packaging used for our Own Brands and store-made products purchased through our stores, e-commerce platforms, and third-party delivery services. We work closely with our suppliers to better understand our footprint and identify areas for improvement. A significant portion of our annual primary plastic footprint is recyclable, reusable or compostable, and/or includes post-consumer recycled (PCR) content.
We’re exploring new and innovative ways to increase the percentage of reusable, recyclable, and/or compostable packaging and our use of post-consumer recycled content. In our milk and beverage manufacturing plants, we are exploring opportunities to increase post-consumer recycled plastic content in packaging components such as bottles, jugs and bottle caps, and using recycled paperboard in our multi-pack cartons.
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 (achieved).
- 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 2021, we launched a program to increase the number of items our associates place in each bag which continued to help us reduce the number of single-use bags used in each transaction in 2022. In addition, last year 7 of our divisions had stores utilizing more durable plastic bags that contain recycled plastic content, are re-usable 125 times, and are washable. Between these two factors, in 2022, we used 428 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
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 2022, we recycled more than 27 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.
In 2022, we achieved our goal to provide recycling instructions on more than 7,000 Own Brands packaged products through How2Recycle labels and QR codes. In addition, more than 40,000 store-made items now feature recycling information on scale labels and other packaging, directing customers to an informative new recycling page.
Moving forward, all new Own Brands products will feature the How2Recycle labeling system 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 the landfill whenever possible.
Read more about some of these initiatives here: Open Nature Compostables