Sainsbury’s recycling push hits 100th-store milestone

Sainsbury’s customers have donated almost 10 million clothing items and accessories and almost two million books, CDs and DVDs at its recycling centres in the past year.

The retailer revealed the stats as it opened its 100th recycling centre at its Watchmoor Park store in Camberley, Surrey. It means Sainsbury’s is one-third of the way to installing recycling centres at 300 of its stores.

All donations at the recycling centres are sent to Oxfam. The centres receive the highest volume of donations for Oxfam in the UK beyond its own shops, Sainsbury’s said.

In addition, every month shoppers recycle more than 250 tonnes of paper and card, four tonnes of cans and tins, 235 tonnes of glass, 15 tonnes of hard plastic and two million batteries at Sainsbury’s recycling centres.

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“Despite tough times our customers still expect us to do the right thing including caring for our environment,” said Sainsbury’s head of engineering, sustainability, energy and environment Paul Crewe.

“Providing convenient facilities to recycle is part of this and where we’ve introduced the new recycling centres we’ve seen measurable increases in the amount of materials being recycled. Customer feedback about the new centres has been very positive, particularly that a wider range of items can now be recycled.”

Last week, Sainsbury’s achieved its target of diverting all store waste from landfill. Surplus food is either sent to food redistribution charities, processed into animal feed or used to generate energy through anaerobic digestion. General waste is recycled or turned into fuel.