By switching from 250-gramme cups and 500-gramme buckets to upright bags for snack tomatoes, Aldi Belgium has realised a saving of the amount of plastic used of 80 per cent. The 250-gramme cup is made from 14.4 grammes of plastic, while the upright bag weighs 2.4 grammes of plastic. For the 500-gramme buckets, this would be 38.6 grammes compared to 8.25 grammes for a resealable upright bag. “We’re talking about saving more than 66,000 kilograms of plastic per year,” according to Ruud den Heiligenberg from Schur.
“Up till now, people tried to make the cups and buckets lighter, but this resulted in just a few per cent less plastic at most. Now that much attention is paid to push back the use of plastic, these new upright bags immediately have a significant effect.”
“In transport, switching to upright bags has also an enormous financial and environmental advantage. More bags than round cups fit into a standard crate. A saving in transport of more than 1,400 pallets per year. That amounts to 44 full lorries. Both retailer and environment benefit from this,” he says.
Better shelf life
“The producer of the upright bags, Schur Star Systems, has the perfect bag for every weight, and they protect the snack tomatoes and ensure good ventilation, so that shelf life is also better than in the cups and buckets. With the packer of snack tomatoes for Aldi Belgium, Van de Kerkhof, they managed to convince both retailer and customer of this new packaging. Sales have only risen since their introduction. The upright bags can easily be opened thanks to their easy-opening, and the 500-gramme packaging has a convenient handle, and has been provided with a resealable strip.”
