ADDING THE 3 Rs TO YOUR SPRING CLEAN
By Feroz Koor, Woolworths Group Head of Sustainability
Springtime is the season of nature’s awakening after the cold dormancy of the winter months. What we are also waking up to is the reality of us living beyond the natural thresholds of our small planet. We are waking up to the necessity of making key lifestyle choices to mitigate against the impact that each one of us has on our planet. September ushers in the opportunity to spring clean and freshen up our thoughts on how best to minimise our impact. One of these is to adopt the 3 Rs mind-set and take up new habits when it comes to reducing, reusing and recycling. We need to start thinking carefully about whether we really do need to buy more. Reviving the arts of fixing and mending also helps to reduce our consumption. We can promote reuse by donating items that could have a second life rather than relegating them to the landfill, and this is particularly relevant to clothing. Woolies donates excess clothing stock and returns to the Clothing Bank, helping to support women-run micro-enterprises. We are currently trialling take-back bins in selected stores to encourage our customers to donate the wearable clothes they no longer need to this empowering cause.
Being more mindful of how we dispose of our waste and aiming to minimise the amount of waste we send to landfill is another way of making a difference. Separating waste into recyclable vs nonrecyclable and diverting them appropriately makes a significant difference. It not only reduces waste to landfill but can create jobs as well. As part of Woolworths’ commitment
to achieve ZERO packaging waste to landfill by 2022, we have recently partnered with WILDTRUST in KwaZulu-Natal to support the development of five WILDLANDS RECYCLING VILLAGES which are in close proximity to key Woolworths stores. Three have been opened so far, making it far easier for our customers to recycle.
Making new products and packaging with recycled content is another way in which we try to minimise our impact. Woolies explores a wide variety of recycled content applications from the recycled PET and recycled cardboard used in the packaging of over 800 food products to the new Fashion, Beauty and Homeware paper bags made out of 100% recycled paper and cardboard which are being trialled at our Blue Route store.
Incorporating recycled content leads to interesting innovations such as our board shorts, sleepwear, jackets and duvet inners made from recycled PET content, as well as glassware made from recycled glass.
Another recent initiative to empower consumer recycling has been the launch of standardised On Pack Recycling Labels (OPRLs) by a number of retailers. Research has shown that there is considerable confusion about what can and can’t be recycled and the OPRLs have been introduced to ensure that South Africans can sort out their recycling at a glance. Woolworths’ summer food ranges will be the first products to bear the new OPRLs.
For those getting into the spirit of spring cleaning, don’t forget ‘Clean-up and Recycle Week’ which runs from September 16 to 21. This encompasses our National Recycling Day and International Coastal Clean-up day. Happy Spring!