Aldi’s balance for the year – 15,000 tons of packaging saved

ALDI Nord and ALDI Süd can look back on a year of success in their joint packaging strategy. The discounters reported that in 2018 alone, they had saved more than 15,000 tonnes (= metric tons) of packaging weight for their private label products. Compared with 2015, this represents a reduction of 40,000 tonnes of packaging material, comprising not only plastics, but also metals, paper, cardboard and glass. Now Aldi wants to test doing without lids on yoghurt packaging.

Cucumbers without plastic film, more sustainable fruit and vegetable bags, and a label with instructions for waste disposal on private label packaging. The two companies ALDI Nord and ALDI Süd have already implemented many of the measures of the packaging strategy launched a good year ago. „Together we are getting ever closer to our goals, taking many small and large steps,“ says Rayk Mende, Managing Director Corporate Responsibility & Quality Assurance at ALDI Nord. „With the overall savings to date, we have reached an important milestone in our mission. Now we are facing the next challenges“, says Kristina Bell, Group Buying Director responsible for Quality & Corporate Responsibility at ALDI Süd.

Test: Yoghurt without a lid

More than half of the packaging material saved consists of plastic: ALDI Nord and ALDI Süd have saved around 22,000 tonnes of plastic and have calculated that this is enough to fill eight million yellow recycling waste bags, pointing out that simply doing without plastic film for wrapping cucumbers saves 120 tonnes of plastic each year. The discounters want to do without superfluous packaging in the future too. For example, selected regional companies are planning to test omitting the additional lid on yoghurt pots and instead to offer a reusable silicone variant. In addition, ALDI Nord and ALDI Süd are improving the recyclability of their product packaging. According to an initial survey, around two thirds of this are already classified as recyclable. A large proportion of the beer bottles are made of 100 percent recycled material. By 2025, ALDI aims to reduce the weight of its packaging by 30 percent compared with the base year 2015. And by 2022, all product packaging is to be recyclable.