Plastic-free July starts

An essential part of this process is the elimination of plastic, one of the milestones of which was the elimination of plastic roll bags last year. Since April 2022, the CO2 e-emissions of these packaging materials would have corresponded to 380 tons, so the revolutionary step was definitely necessary. During the plastic-free July period, Auchan wants to draw customers’ attention to the importance of environmentally conscious consumer behavior with various activities. On this occasion, the company also announces a special design competition, the aim of which is to make its sustainable packaging even more attractive.

The plastic-free July campaign is starting again, to which Auchan Hungary has joined for the third year. A prominent part of the company’s complex sustainability strategy is to reduce the use of plastic, a huge milestone in this was the complete removal of single-use plastic rollbags for weighing fruit, vegetables and baked goods from the range of stores in April 2022. Over a period of more than a year, the company calculated with the help of its cooperating partner, ZeroKarbon, what the carbon dioxide emissions of these bags would have been. The result is shocking, because in 14 months, up to and including July 1, 2023, this number would have been 380 tons of CO2 e-emissions, since according to previous experience, nearly 206 tons of rollbags would have left the stores during this time. The alarming result is perhaps even more perceptible if we consider that it would result in roughly the same amount of environmental pollution if, with an average consumption of 8 liters, a gasoline car circled the Earth 42 times, but the same figure is obtained with the annual electricity consumption of 814 Hungarian households, or if 1,013 times we fly from Budapest to London. Equally astonishing is the fact that 1,519 mature trees need to grow in 10 years to absorb this amount.