The company behind Tesco’s abandoned reusable packaging trial has told the government it must bring in French-style regulations forcing supermarkets to switch to reuse at scale or risk losing the war on plastic.
Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle and boss of pioneering reuse system Loop, said France’s experience had shown a combination of regulation and funding incentives could help the industry move from “pointless pilots” to full-scale rollout.
Loop launched trials with the UK’s biggest retailer in 2020, involving major brands such as Coca-Cola, Heinz and Persil. But The Grocer revealed in 2022 that Tesco had quietly wound up the trial.
In July this year, supermarkets including Tesco, Aldi, Morrisons, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s made a commitment to move towards a full-scale reuse packaging model by 2030, despite a string of pilots across the industry having been wound up. The supermarkets gave no detailed timeframe and there was no major commitment from manufacturers.
Szaky told The Gorcer companies were willing to make a major shift to a reuse model, but said it was down to the government to create the right regulatory backdrop as a matter of urgency.
He said the success of French giant Carrefour, which became the first retailer in the world to launch Loop in-store following an initial e-commerce pilot initiated in 2019, had now expanded to nearly 350 stores across the country. Carrefour has been followed by other French retailers including Monoprix and Coopérative U, showing a fully scaled reuse model was possible, according to Szaky.
However, he said it had only proved effective because France had brought in regulations requiring 10% of packaging placed on the market to be reusable by 2027.
French regulators have also brought in regulations requiring its EPR operators to invest 5% of the money raised from the packaging tax towards funding reuse systems, in what Szaky called a “carrot and stick” approach.
With the UK now bringing in its own EPR regulations, Loop is urging the government to make similar commitments towards channeling funding into companies that scale up reuse.
Tesco’s 2021 Loop trial saw it roll out a range of nearly 100 reusable packaged products across 10 large stores in the south east, involving brands such as Fever-Tree, Carex, Tetley and BrewDog. Tesco CEO Ken Murphy predicted the trial would have an “enormous”“ impact on the circular economy.
But Szaky said the planned national rollout of the scheme was canned just days away form its next big push because of the impact of the cost of living crisis.
“Tesco was our best test of all. Out of all of them, Tesco had the best assortment, the best purchases, best returns and we were planning internally to roll this out.
“But what we witnessed is the UK got the most proverbial punches to the face during the moments between Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war, along with the PM and minister rotations.
“Everyone focused on cost of living and everything else got put on the backburner and this was all with a week or two before we were going to go to the next major phase.”
However, the Loop boss said he was “optimistic” that the move towards reuse plastic could be on the verge of another major breakthrough, if politicians could be persuaded to come on board.
In November last year, The Grocer revealed Wrap was working with supermarkets on the launch of a Plastics Pact Mark II, which would put reuse technology and loose produce at its heart, having identified “clear appetites” among the industry despite all the setbacks.
Szaky said the company was working with Wrap and retailers involved in the pledge, who were now actively exploring a new phase in the war on plastic.
“The dialogues have opened up even to the point when some of them have now done trips out to France to see the system in action. We’re in dialogue with most of the big retailers and we’ve had two of them come out to spend two days with a whole team in France. The fact we’re having senior leaders have been on multi-day trips to France really shows they are serious.
“But what we need now is to make sure we’ve brought the politicians along. Regulatory underlay is absolutely critical if reuse at scale is to succeed.
“But I’m optimistic we could be on the verge on a major breakthrough. France has shown that reuse can work – not as a concept or a pilot, but at full commercial scale.
“We now need both that carrot and stick approach to make it work in the UK.”
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