Recycling

Waitrose has recycled packaging materials such as cardboard and plastic from its shops and distribution centres for more than 20 years. As part of our legal packaging obligation Waitrose spends almost £1 million a year to help recycle consumer packaging.

We also encourage customer recycling and our Waitrose shops offer recycling facilities for customers where feasible, the only limiting factors being space or local collection arrangements. As part of our commitment to encouraging customer recycling we provide recycling points for plastic carrier bags in Waitrose shops, our five Food & Home shops offer mobile phone recycling, and 2010 will see the introduction of battery recycling facilities in all shops.

Waitrose also supports websites Recycle Now and Recycle More (these links open in new windows) that enable consumers to identify their nearest recycling centre and importantly, the types of materials that may be recycled.

Working with WRAP, the British Retail Consortium and other leading retailers, we developed a standard on-pack recycling labelling scheme for packaging, which was launched in 2008. The initiative replaces the previous range of recycling symbols and messages with a single Recycle now logo and an icon to indicate the recyclability of the packaging.