Simply against waste

The original experiment started up a year ago by the Municipalities of Brescia and Aprica to reduce volumes of municipal waste according to the directive of Regione Lombardia has reached its conclusion.

Thanks to the involvement of the Coop, Simply and Auchan salespoints present in the area, a campaign for the promotion of products with packaging reduced in weight and size has sensitized the citizens to the environmental problems concerning packaging.
The mechanism was simple: at the special desks the customers of the three large chains were able to inform themselves on the undertaking and on the characteristics of the goods with lightened packaging (for the most own brand and Henkel products), goods that each salespoint indicated with special signs and with a price marker on the shelves, to facilitate their being located.

This undertaking is particularly coherent with the sustainability policy fielded by Simply. The Auchan group chain has been committed since 2006 to the rationalization of the packs of its private label products, with well-documented results. Some examples: in 2012 alone, working on 150 types of packs a saving of 70 t of material was achieved, at the same time avoiding discharge into the atmosphere of 119 tons of  CO2 (the quantity of carbon absorbed in a year by 6 hectares of woodland). Parallel to this, optimisation of logistics and a selection of materials have been promoted, so as to identify (and adopt) those with a reduced environmental impact, that have been recycled or are easily and correctly recyclable with segregated collection systems used in Italy.

But this is not all. Simply is committed right across the board to increasing the recycling of used packaging and waste collects at the salespoint, making best use of and donating surplus food (320 t corresponding to 582,000 meals a year!) to charity concerns and promoting the purchase of loose detergents.