Waitrose Donates £1 Million to Fight Marine Plastic Pollution

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster):  The Berkshire, England-headquartered chain of British supermarkets Waitrose has donated £1 million to support the fight against marine plastic pollution. The money will be raised from its plastic carrier bag levy funds. It must be noted that every penny raised from the sale of carrier bags at Waitrose’s England branches go into a community environmental fund, from which donations are made towards good causes.

Waitrose has pledged to donate £500,000 to the Commonwealth Marine Plastics Research and Innovation Fund. The funds will be utilized to conduct research into the impacts and ways of reducing plastics in the marine environment. The balance £500,000 will be donated to efforts to help clean beaches and rivers across England over the next one-year period. Waitrose will partner with the Marine Conservation Society (MSC) which has been productive in cleaning around 500 rivers across the nation since July 2017.

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Rob Collins, Managing Director, Waitrose stated that the firm is one among the early contributors to the Fund. The pledged donation from the carrier bag levy proceeds will help support development of effective solutions to tackle marine plastics pollution, Collins noted. The company will continue to support all efforts to deal with plastic pollution. It is already involved in several projects that work towards this cause, he added.

Earlier in 2016, Waitrose had stopped selling items containing microbeads. It had also committed to make its own-label packaging across all food categories to more environment-friendly material by making them recyclable, reusable or home compostable by 2025. Earlier during this month, Waitrose had pledged to remove all disposable coffee cups from its shops before the end of this year. Further, it had also decided to replace single-use plastic straws with FSC-certified paper alternatives.

Recently, the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has announced the launch of the ‘U.K. Plastics Pact’-a programme that aims to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment. Waitrose was one of the many UK businesses to extend support to the project.