Tesco has launched a new and ground-breaking initiative that enables customers to buy a range of everyday household items in reusable packaging.
Customers at 10 large Tesco stores in the east of England can purchase a wide range of food, drink, household and beauty products in reusable packaging that can be returned to store after use so that it can be cleaned, refilled and used again.
The UK’s largest supermarket has teamed up with TerraCycle – a global reusable packaging platform – to run the Loop iniative, which it hopes could see hundreds of thousands of packaging items be reused rather than recycled.
The reusable range of 88 products includes some of the UK’s most popular brands – including Persil, Coca-Cola, Bisto, Tetley and BrewDog – and includes 35 Tesco own-brand essentials – such as pasta, rice, sugar and oil – with more products to be added to the range in the coming months.
Customers can pick up products from the Loop range in a dedicated section of the store. All products will come in pre-filled containers, so there is no need for customers to bring their own containers for refilling.
Tesco Group CEO Ken Murphy said: “We are determined to tackle plastic waste and one of the ways we can help is by improving reuse options available to customers. Bringing Loop to our stores is a significant milestone in this journey. With 88 everyday products available, we’re giving customers a wide range of options and we’ll learn as much as we can from this to inform our future packaging plans.”
Prices for items in the Loop scheme are comparable to the original, although a refundable deposit – starting at 20p – will be paid on each product at the checkout. The deposit is refunded via an app when the packaging is returned to a collection point in the store.
Tesco believes that the impact of the Loop scheme could be “enormous”. If customers in the 10 trial stores switched just three items from their weekly shop – tomato ketchup, cola and washing up liquid – from recyclable packaging to reusable Loop alternatives, the packaging for these products alone would be used and reused more than two and a half million times a year.
Those figures offer scope for change on a huge scale if the scheme catches on, with TerraCycle CEO and founder Tom Szaky hoping that a positive trial will lead to a wider rollout across the country.
“The consumer reaction to Loop in these first Tesco stores will prove pivotal in refining the Loop offering and ultimately we hope to scale reuse across more stores and the number of product lines available,” said Szaky.
“Tesco is the perfect partner to bring Loop to retail in the UK due to its commitment to sustainability, in combating plastics waste and in its operational scale as the UK’s biggest grocery retailer.”
Image courtesy of Tesco.
