Sustainability Game Changer Coming To Woolworths

After completing a successful trial in Sydney’s Crows Nest, Woolworths will be rolling out a BYO container program across Tasmania and a West End store in Queensland. 

In a bid to tackle single-use plastics, the supermarket giant is aiming to roll out the option nationally, allowing customers to bring their own containers to fill up on food from the deli, meat and seafood counters.

Early next year, the game-changing plastic initiative will roll out in stores across New South Wales and Victoria too. 

How Woolworths BYO Works:

Woolworths Staff will adjust the start weight of a customer’s container, fill it and print out a barcode to be scanned at the checkout. 

Woolworths Chief Sustainability Officer Alex Holt said it’s an option customers have been asking for, for a while. 

"Across the community, we’re increasingly adding reusable packaging to our regular routines – whether it be reusable cups for our morning coffee or bringing our own bags to the supermarket. The potential impact of a small change like this is huge. If every customer brought their own deli container, an average store could save up to 10,000 plastic containers a year,” she said.

For safety reasons, containers brought by customers must have a resealable lid, be clean, be in good condition and not be glass or single-use.

Whilst it’s available on all products sold by weight at the deli, meat and seafood counters, it’s not currently used for Woolworth's salads sold by volume.

Woolworths says it's committed to making 100 per cent of its own brand packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by the end of 2023 and both Woolworths and Coles aim to switch to 100% renewable energy by the end of 2025 too. 

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