How green are supermarket bags?
FOUR UAE OUTLETS REVEAL HOW THEY ARE ADOPTING BIODEGRADABLE PLASTIC BAGS AND GIVING SHOPPERS ECO-FRIENDLY ALTERNATIVES
Every day, by the hour, thousands of plastic bags carry our retail and supermarket purchases home in the UAE. Only a few consumers fully grasp the toll that the bags can wreak upon the environment.
According to the Ministry of Climate Change and Envrionment, 11 billion plastic bags are used in the UAE per year.
In the UAE, some supermarkets are adopting biodegradable plastic bags to give away to consumers. Gulf News spoke to four supermarkets about their eco-friendly endeavours.
Carrefour UAE
Carrefour UAE said it is actively looking at ways it can support waste reduction and reduce its environmental impact across its operations. Currently, the company offers customers two options for shopping bags.
Biodegradable bags are used as standard across its 88 stores in the UAE. These bags have been designed to be thinner than previous shopping bags, which means less raw material and less resources to manufacture them.
The bags are ‘oxo biodegradable’ which means they degrade faster than other alternatives and do so naturally, i.e., they degrade through exposure to oxidation and without need for a biological process.
The company additionally sells re-usable eco-bags in different sizes at each cash till. These bags are sold at an affordable price of between Dh0.5 to Dh2.50.
Carrefour was an early regional advocate of this concept and launched its popular ecobags in 2007. The bags are sold with a lifetime guarantee and Carrefour will replace them free of charge at the customer’s request if needed.
All bags supplied by Carrefour meet the Emirates Authority for Standardisation and Metrology standards and are therefore legally compliant with UAE government directives.
Spinneys
Glen Thompson, marketing manager, said: “Since 2011 at Spinneys, all of our bags are oxo-biogradable, which take three to six months to fully decompose. We also offer customers a range of reusable alternatives including jute and trolley bags. All the profits of our reusable bags go to the Emirates Wildlife Society.
“We are developing a new Community Social Responsibility programme of which reducing, and where possible, removing plastic from our business will form a major part. We are also launching a customer education programme.”
Choithrams
Subhash K, corporate marketing manager, said: “Choithrams uses bags which are oxo–biodegradable at all stores.
“We are exploring different ways to reduce the usage of plastic bags. Every year, we run an awareness drive around World Environment Day to focus on alternatives to plastic bags, educating customers to “reduce, reuse and recycle”.
“We will soon introduce environment friendly cotton/jute bags and give customers an option to go green and play their part towards safeguarding the environment.”
Union Co op
Union Co-op, the UAE’s largest consumer cooperative, confirmed that it uses eco-friendly plastic bags that are biodegradable in all its outlets and malls, which contribute to preserving the environment and promoting the UAE’s sustainability vision.
Suhail Al Bastaki, Director of the Happiness and Marketing Department at Union Co op, said: “Union Co op deals with factories certificated by the Emirates Authority For Standardisation and Metrology to make the plastic bags. The product is registered under the Emirates Conformity Assessment Scheme (ECAS) and complies with the requirements of UAE. S. GSO.5009: 2009. This stems from our keenness to contribute to building a sustainable environment.”
Union Coop has also sponsored more than 25 corporate social responsibility initiatives and awareness campaigns in 2017 for 11 government entities by printing important campaign messages on shopping bags to raise awareness among the public.
The plastic bags featured campaigns such as Pedestrians Safety by Dubai Police, Car Free Day by Dubai Municipality, Basket of Giving by Dubai Health Authority, to name a few.