Greenpeace wary of ‘greenwashing’ tactics

INDIVIDUAL food items wrapped in plastic within plastic-contained packaging.

“And then they will probably offer you a plastic bag to keep it in,” quipped Greenpeace Africa’s Angelo Louw, on how Woolworths “wastes” plastic.

This week, the company announced its vision of becoming the first retailer in South Africa to send zero packaging waste to landfill.

This would entail the phasing out of unnecessary single-use plastics, such as earbuds, plastic shopping bags and straws, it said.

“All its packaging (will) be either reusable or recyclable by 2022. Woolworths has also committed to phasing out single-use plastic shopping bags completely by 2020,” the company said in a statement on World Environment Day on Tuesday.

This would require 100% recyclable material and a “supportive” recycling infrastructure.

But Louw was hesitant to heap praise on the retailer.

“It’s not the first to jump on the plastics bandwagon.

“At no point do we see them immediately having plans to stop using excessive plastic in their food packaging.

“The Woolworths decision is obviously welcomed but we’re just hoping it’s not ‘greenwashing’, that they’re not jumping onto a bandwagon that is topical at this point and they’re not leveraging the World Environment Day theme as a marketing ploy,” he said.

“The thing about Woolworths is that their clients are very conscious about sustainability.

“I find it so strange that a retailer like this hasn’t started rolling out a process like this much earlier.”

In its statement, Woolworths said it was working towards removing all packaging that was currently not recyclable and had reduced packaging by nearly 700 tons.

“This means that the retailer has been able to reduce the amount of plastic used in its packaging, while still maintaining food integrity and preventing food waste,” it said.

Several in-store trials were under way at selected stores to engage customers on the new plastic reduction efforts, including wooden cutlery and paper straws.

Plastic straws are no longer available for purchase in store.

“Paper-stemmed earbuds will be on the shelves by the end of October and plastic ear buds will no longer be sold in store.”

Louw runs Greenpeace Africa’s newly-launched vuma.earth, an online platform for ordinary people to start environmental campaigns.

One of the most popular is the #Breakfreefromplastic campaign, which urges local food retailers to phase out single-use plastic packaging that is “choking the world”.

Public pressure from this has resulted in commitments by Wimpy and Ocean Basket to phase out plastic cups, straws and containers, said Louw.

But despite “jumping onto the #Strawssuck bandwagon”, Kauai still continued to offer single-use plastic straws to customers.

“Their smoothie cup is designed in a way that it’s almost impossible to use without a straw.”

Plastic ear buds will no longer be sold in store