A total of 145 Woolworths stores across South Africa are now free from single-use plastic shopping bags.
Despite a challenging year with Covid-19 lockdown disruptions, Woolworths has continued rolling out its low-cost reusable bag to 120 additional stores as part of the retailer’s vision for a zero packaging waste to landfill and commitment to phase out single-use plastic shopping bags.
“We are delighted to be able to take such a significant step forward in the removal of single-use plastic shopping bags from our stores, especially at a time when we have had so many supply uncertainties,” said Feroz Koor, Woolworths Holdings group head of sustainability.
“The local supplier of our low-cost reusable bag has been severely impacted by Covid-19 lockdown disruptions, which has lost them 692 hours of production time over the last eight months. But over the last three months, they have been able to increase their production to enable us to now remove single-use plastic shopping bags from an additional 120 stores which is a substantial move to reaching our goal of removing all single-use plastic shopping bags from all of our stores,” Koor explained.
“Great to see Woolworths removing single-use plastic bags from these stores and taking on the task of educating their consumers about adopting more reuse actions in their daily lives and supporting local enterprises. Important for the consumer to also understand that these reusable bags need to be reused to carry groceries or repurposed multiple times and not only used once,” comments Lorren de Kock, WWF-SA project manager: circular plastics economy.
For a full list of Woolworths’ 145 stores which are single-use plastic shopping bag free, go to www.woolworths.co.za/recycle.
