Tesco has partnered with global reusable packaging platform Loop to enable customers to buy a limited range of food, drink, household and beauty products in reusable packaging that can be returned to store to be cleaned, refilled and used again.
The reusable range comprises 88 products from well known brands, including Persil, Fever-Tree, Carex, Tetley Tea and BrewDog. The retailer has included 35 own-brand essentials in the range, like pasta, rice, oil and sugar, with more products due to be added throughout the year.
After choosing products from the Loop fixture, customers pay a deposit (starting at 20p) on each reusable product at checkout which is refunded via an app when they return the packaging to a collection point in the store.
The initiative is being rolled out in ten Tescos in the east of England and the retailer says that if customers in these stores switch their recyclable tomato ketchup, cola and washing up liquid bottles to the reusable alternatives, the packaging would be used and reused over 2.5 million times a year.
The consumer reaction to Loop in these first Tesco stores will prove pivotal in refining the Loop offering
“We are determined to tackle plastic waste and one of the ways we can help is by improving reuse options available to customers,” explains Ken Murphy, Tesco Group CEO. “Bringing Loop to our stores is a significant milestone in this journey. With 88 everyday products available, we’re giving customers a wide range of options and we’ll learn as much as we can from this to inform our future packaging plans.”
Adds Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of Loop and TerraCycle: “The consumer reaction to Loop in these first Tesco stores will prove pivotal in refining the Loop offering and ultimately we hope to scale reuse across more stores and the number of product lines available. Tesco is the perfect partner to bring Loop to retail in the UK due to its commitment to sustainability, in combating plastics waste and in its operational scale as the UK’s biggest grocery retailer.”
The initiative follows a year-long online pilot, launched in July 2020, that allowed customers to order and return products in reusable packaging from home.
Images by Ben Stevens, Parsons Media
