2024 ESG Report
Our approach to plastics
We are assessing the use of plastic in our business to reduce or eliminate it wherever we can. Our efforts are centered around three distinct and complementary pillars:
Eliminate What We Can
Better Manage What We Use
Invest in Research and Community Clean Ups
Canada Plastics Pact
In 2020, we helped create and became a founding member of the Canada Plastics Pact, part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Plastics Pact network. Coalition partners share the vision of changing from a linear take-make-waste system to a more circular plastic packaging economy.
The goal is to improve landfill diversion rates, while increasing the quality and quantity of recycled material. The Pact brings together government, retail and consumer brands, resin makers, recyclers and experts up and down the value chain, to make better packaging decisions that support a circular economy.
Golden Design Rules
Established by the world’s largest retail and consumer goods companies, the Golden Design Rules set high standards for packaging design, by reducing materials and eliminating problematic elements. We believe in these rules and have communicated them to our hundreds of control brand vendors, outlining our new Loblaw packaging standards and highlighting the global rules. Additionally, in October 2023 we sent a communication to all our national brand vendors, encouraging them to adopt the GDRs. We informed our national brand vendors that our merchants will begin incorporating the use of the GDRs in product packaging as a factor in all product listings starting January 1, 2025. And, that we aspire to have only recyclable or reusable1 packaging on our shelves by January 1, 2026.
Due to the complexity and variability of the capabilities of the municipal recycling systems across Canada, we define “recyclable or reusable” as being compliant with the Consumer Goods Forum’s Golden Design Rules (“GDRs”) with a focus on material conversions and the removal of problematic elements where we can drive change. As such, our compliance to the rules excludes: (a) for a subset of products, GDR 3 “headspace reduction”; (b) GDR 8 to “reduce virgin plastic in business-to-business packaging”, which is not the scope of this control brand and in-store packaging project; and (c) GDR 9 “on pack recycling”, which we do not endorse as it is the outcome of downstream stakeholders upgrading the capability of current municipal recycling systems.
We have established a roadmap to convert the balance of our control brand and in-store plastic packaging products by the end of 2025.
In-store initiatives
¹ excludes T&T®
Reduce, reuse, recycle
We overhauled the coffee aisle by replacing unrecyclable packaging made with a minimum of 80% paper content from renewable, recyclable and sustainable Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) sourced tree fibres.
100% of our President’s Choice®, no name® and PC® Organics whole bean and ground coffee products are in recyclable packaging.
Plus, our industry leading PC® coffee packaging earned a 2022 Global Packaging Award for Package Innovation and Sustainable Design.
Eliminating plastic bags
In 2023, we celebrated the final exit of plastic bags in our stores, signifying the end of a 15-year journey started in 2007 when we implemented our pay-for-bag program to help reduce plastic waste.
Funding research for better plastic outcomes
Since 2021, we have partnered with Ocean Wise, a global, ocean conservation organization that addresses overfishing, ocean pollution and climate change.
