Ocado Retail has claimed to be the first supermarket in the world to run a net zero carbon head office, after striking an agreement with Swiss carbon dioxide capture and storage company Climeworks.
Ocado Group’s retail arm is the only grocery retailer to signed a carbon dioxide removal agreement with Climeworks. Ocado Retail said it had paid for Climeworks to remove 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Climeworks runs modular CO2 collectors, powered by renewable energy, that capture CO2 from the atmosphere, which is then permanently stored underground.
The 1,000-tonne amount is the equivalent of what Ocado’s Hatfield, Hertfordshire HQ will emit over the next seven years.
The move comes as part of Ocado Retail’s company-wide aim of being carbon net zero by 2040.
As part of Ocado’s involvement in the UK Plastics Pact, it has eliminated all PVC, polystyrene and black plastics from its own-label packaging. It intends to make all own-label items 100% recyclable and to be derived from at least 30% recycled materials by 2025.
The brand also claims to have the lowest food waste of any supermarket, at just 0.4% compared with the industry average of between 2% and 5%.
Climeworks in September launched its largest facility to date – named Orca – in Iceland, where air-captured CO2 is permanently stored via mineralisation in basaltic rock formations.
“We are excited and thankful to welcome a new industry leader through the agreement with Ocado,” said Christoph Gebald, co-CEO and co-founder of Climeworks. “Ocado Retail’s net zero strategy is a great example of how emissions reduction and emissions removal should be combined.”
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