Albert Heijn scraps plastic bags for fruit and vegetables

Albert Heijn will stop using plastic bags at the fruit and vegetable department. This saves 130 million bags - or 243,000 kilos of plastic - per year. Customers can now use sustainable fresh bags. These are washable and can be used dozens of times. The supermarket is also introducing a new line of ten more sustainable shopping bags. 

Everyone knows the plastic bags at the fruit and vegetable department. Handy for loose apples or green beans, but bad for the environment if you do not recycle them properly. That is why Albert Heijn says goodbye to these so-called 'shirt bags'. To inform customers about this, a message will be posted at the fruit and vegetable departments of all shops from mid-April onwards, announcing the retirement of the hemt bags. All customers in the Netherlands will receive free sustainable reusable fresh bags for the first two weeks when purchasing fruit and vegetables that need to be weighed. By the end of 2021, the free plastic bags will have disappeared in all shops.  

Albert Heijn is also tackling the plastic bags in its home deliveries. In the course of this year a return system will be introduced, so that customers can return them. As a result, 645,000 kg of plastic (31 million bags) can be recycled responsibly on an annual basis. 

Less packaging material

Marit van Egmond, General Manager of Albert Heijn: "In the past three years, we saved over seven million kilos of packaging material. From meal and lunch salads in a thinner dish and thinner soft drink bottles to offering fruit and vegetables completely unpackaged. We are always looking for ways to reduce packaging. For example, we are currently replacing the buckets of snack vegetables with a thinner container with a thin top layer instead of a lid. For the step of abolishing the free bags in the fruit and vegetable department, we ask customers to join us in wasting less plastic."

Recycled shopping bags  

Many customers already bring their own shopping bags when they come to the supermarket. For those customers who do not have a bag with them, Albert Heijn is launching a new bag range with ten different more sustainable shopping bags made from 100% recycled plastic (PET). These bags are easy to fold, washable and competitively priced. This makes them a good alternative to regular plastic bags. From mid-April, these more sustainable shopping bags will be brought to people's attention with the campaign 'A bag for every time'. 

Most sustainable supermarket  

On Thursday 25 March 2021, Albert Heijn was once again elected by consumers as the most sustainable supermarket chain in the Netherlands. For five years in a row, the company has succeeded in gaining increasing appreciation from Dutch consumers when it comes to sustainability, according to Annemarije Tillema, Country Director Sustainable Brand Index NL. "The range of organic, fair trade certified, vegetarian and vegan products in its assortment is an important reason for this appreciation.

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