Coles Group Reaches New Milestone Recycling 905 Tonnes of Soft Plastics
The bins accept different categories of soft plastics including biscuit packets, lolly bags, frozen food bags, bread, rice and pasta bags, which customers could not drop in their kerbside recycling bins at home.
SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Melbourne-headquartered Australian supermarket, retail and consumer services chain Coles Group has reported significant surge in volume of soft plastics recycled through its stores last financial year.
According to Coles, its customers recycled 905 tonnes or 226 million soft plastics in the last financial year. This is up by 32%, compared with the year before.
The supermarket giant collects soft plastics from customers through REDcycle bins placed across all its stores, which takes in soft plastics from customers. The bins accept different categories of soft plastics including biscuit packets, lolly bags, frozen food bags, bread, rice and pasta bags, which customers could not drop in their kerbside recycling bins at home, Coles noted.
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The soft plastics collected by Coles are recycled into a number of useful products including furniture, playground equipment garden edging, wheel stops, and materials for walkways in parks, roads and bollards.
Coles chief property and export officer Thinus Keeve commended the efforts by customers in reducing waste. The partnership with REDcycle in 2011 has led to drastic improvement in recycling collection. Coles is looking at ways to divert even more waste from landfill and reduce packaging, so as to become Australia’s most sustainable retailer, Keeve added.
The top performing stores were the ones in St Agnes and Blackwood in South Australia, followed by Kingston in Tasmania, Jamison in the ACT. On the contrary, Churchill Centre, Elizabeth, Prospect and Craigmore stores were the worst performers during the year.