Ahold Delhaize, the parent company of Albert Heijn, Etos, and Bol.com, has announced new climate-friendly policies, which should see the company be climate neutral by 2040, and all Albert Heijn packaging fully recyclable by 2025.
Ahold Delhaize’s decision will see the company’s initial climate goals brought forward by 10 years. It is a significant move, as the 150-year-old company is the largest private employer in the Netherlands.
According to Ahold, more than a third of the company’s carbon emissions come from refrigeration systems, while less than 10 percent comes from transportation. In order to offset these emissions, Ahold plans to switch to renewable energy at as many sites as possible and replace cooling systems with more climate-friendly alternatives.
“We are committed to doing our part to ensure we can serve our customers and communities responsibly for the next 150 years,” said Ahold Chief Frans Muller.
In addition to this, this week saw supermarket giant Albert Heijn announce that all of its own-brand packaging will be 100 percent recyclable by 2025. The supermarket says it has already taken steps to reduce its environmental impact and use less plastic in its packaging, but acknowledges that more must be done.
“In 2017, [we used] 80 million kilograms of packaging material,” says Anita Scholte op Reimer, head of Quality and Sustainability at Albert Heijn. “By 2025 we want to have reduced that by twenty million kilos.” According to Scholte op Reimer, the company has already reduced its packaging by 9 million kilograms by using a mixture of “new technologies, smarter packaging, better recycling, and stimulating the reuse of packaging.”