Zero Waste Week – Limit your Waste

Limit your Waste and follow the 3R’s 🗑

Everyone needs to play their part to ensure that we take care of and preserve our planet for our future generations.  A core principle of COP26 is protecting communities and natural habitats, and we can all support this by reducing waste and tackling litter. Here are a few easy steps to help you follow the 3R’s:

Reduce – Limit the amount of waste you produce. This is the best way to help our environment. While shopping only purchase what you intend to use, limiting your weekly waste.

Reuse – There are many ways in which you could reuse something to last longer. There are lots of options available like reusable bottles, containers, straws or even using glass jars for storing items.

Recycle - This is where your materials can be thrown away to be used again while they are made into new products. Cardboard, some plastics and paper are widely recycled. How about taking part in ‘Second Hand September’? This is all about giving your old clothes a second chance to be reused and resold for longer life. It's due to the fact that 13 million items of clothing go to landfills every week due to ‘fast fashion’ which is now on the increase. So, instead of buying new clothing, why not take a trip down to your local charity or second-hand shop to help our planet?

Our Soft plastic recycling programme in Food stores ♻

Soft plastics are now very common in many supermarkets and shops but the issue with this type of plastic is most UK councils are unable to recycle soft plastics from household waste. Since July, we have now been able to offer this for our members and customers across 200 of our Food stores with soft plastic collection points in every local area. The handy in-store collection points will help customers dispose of these materials more easily and can take bread bags, lids from ready meals, biscuit wrappers and wrappers from pet food. Having implemented this initiative we can now proudly say that all of our Co-op branded packaging is now 100% widely recyclable! 

As a Society we’re committed to making change and will encourage members and customers to work with us to build a better environment for our future. Recycling helps to play a big part in this and now we encourage colleagues to get on board and help us achieve our targets.

Already many members have used the soft plastic collection points and below is some fantastic feedback!

Eco-schools and our Childcare nurseries ✅

Look out for further stories and opportunities to take climate action as we lead up to COP26, including how we are inspiring our Little Pioneers in our Childcare nurseries around climate action. It’s really important that our children are educated at a young age in planet preservation; as it will help them make decisions which will affect many future generations to come. Over the coming weeks, we will be featuring our Childcare Nursery activity to educate children on the environment through our Green Flag Eco-school accreditation nurseries, in partnership with the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.

"We're so proud of the work our nurseries do to care for the environment around them and teach our little ones the importance of doing so too!"  Leah Colson, Co-op Childcare