Food and drink retailer Booths is joining competitors like Waitrose in finding ways to reduce the amount of single-use plastic being used within its business.
The family-owned grocery chain has recently launched an initiative encouraging customers to bring their own reusable containers when purchasing fresh meat and fish from its in-store counters.
Booths brand and innovations manager, Matt Bruno said: “We’re constantly striving to become a more environmentally friendly retailer.
“Enabling our customers to bring their own clean, lidded containers to purchase fresh meat and fish from our counters is a natural progression towards becoming more sustainable.’’
Booths says it will continue to be proactive in phasing out single-use plastic.
It has already completely eliminated plastic cutlery from its takeaway counter products and inside Booths branded, pre-packaged food-to-go.
This move will prevent half a million pieces of plastic cutlery being used within Booths each year.
Further initiatives include:
- Changing pre-packed options to include less plastic waste and more recyclable materials
- Removal of plastic bottles from the Booths cafe, switching over to glass bottles and cans which are indefinitely recyclable
- Removal of plastic straws and the introduction of paper straws
- Removal of loose produce bags, to be replaced with compostable loose produce bags
- Introduction of reusable cotton net bag for loose produce
- Introduction of cardholder saving on selected loose fruit and vegetables
- Introduction of LED lighting and CO2 fridges (which are kinder to the environment) in some stores
- Increased use of market-style fixtures to encourage shoppers to choose loose fruit and vegetables rather than pre-packed
