Environmental waste management controls costs for discount retailer

Greenstar, a leading provider of integrated waste management systems is helping ALDI, one of the fastest growing grocery retailing specialists in the UK to meet its objectives of responsible citizenship, social responsibility and low prices.

As a discount retailer, cost savings are extremely important to ALDI. However, even in these days of rising inflation, with especially big increases in waste disposal costs and land fill taxes, Greenstar has been able to keep ALDI’s environmental costs stable for the last three years.

ALDI is growing rapidly in the UK and already has 312 stores dotted around the country. Three years ago Andreas Siegmann, Managing Director for ALDI in the Midlands and the man responsible for all waste matters in the UK, went to an environmental exhibition where he met up with Greenstar. Impressed with what they told him, he subsequently invited them to present their capabilities to him and his team.

Shortly afterwards, Greenstar were appointed as environmental partners to ALDI. Siegmann explains: “We were looking for two things: first a partner that can deal with our issues nationwide, because until then we had a fragmented system that was regionalised; and second, someone that was more professional and comprehensive in there approach, than what we were accustomed to. What convinced me that Greenstar were for us were the capabilities and professionalism of its staff. This opinion has been reconfirmed time and time again over the last few years. I personally looked into at least five different providers. Greenstar had the most convincing calibre of personnel that came across professional, genuine and not only interested in making a buck out of waste but in actually finding solutions to the problems that we are having."

Starting with the midlands region, and focusing mainly on packaging compliance, the Greenstar team began working with individual stores, moving on to the whole region and then other regions until all the stores and warehouses in the UK were included. ALDI has invested heavily in cardboard recycling and one of the early Greenstar objectives was to generate more revenue for recycling.

Services have also recently been added for recycling fluorescent tubes and animal by-products and, moving forward, there will be a focus on the WEEE directive. This covers, among others, household appliances, IT and telecommunications equipment, audiovisual and lighting equipment, electrical and electronic tools, toys, leisure and sports equipment. It aims to reduce waste arising from electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), make producers and distributors of EEE responsible for the environmental impact of their products, especially when they become waste; encourage separate collection and subsequent treatment, reuse, recovery, recycling and sound environmental disposal of EEE and improve the environmental performance of all those involved during the lifecycle of EEE.

Before Greenstar were appointed, ALDI used various regional contractors, all co-ordinated in house. Keith Brown, Sales Director for Greenstar, elaborates: “With ALDI we have become a single point of contact for all their sites. This reduces administration, has standardised in-house procedures and includes site-specific audits and recycling strategies. Regular meetings between the Greenstar regional director and senior ALDI personnel ensure that all objectives are met."

Siegmann adds: “This type of activity requires commitment at the highest level in an organisation and as a result of what Greenstar provides I am able to provide regular and accurate reports with regard to waste and recycling issues at main board level”.
He continues
"We now consider Greenstar to be our environmental partner and we have worked hand in hand for the last three years on a comprehensive system for environmental solutions that start at the beginning of the process, with packaging and its reduction, and at the end of the process with regards to taking care of our own creative waste streams in stores and distribution centres. We have also introduced national KPIs. Every store manager, area manager and regional manager in the country now has particular cost targets related to the amount of waste they produce. They can also compare their figures to everyone else's, so they are benchmarked against each other – introducing a competitive edge – which helps reducing waste as well. ALDI’s overall recycling within the stores is now just over 70%."

Brown, elaborating on how the programme will evolve explains: "Another area that we are going to start to look at for ALDI is analysing the remaining waste, primarily out of date products, and implement a solution for the better management of these products. This will further enhance Aldis recycling capability and with the ever increasing cost of waste management and landfill will ensure costs going forward are kept to a minimum.”

"We want to come up with other ideas and solutions where we can divert  this remaining wastestream  away from landfill. There has been a very successful project over the last 12-18 months of capturing the recyclables the opportunity now is to further reduce costs by removing this waste out of the general waste stream."

Siemann concludes: "As a discount operator, simplicity and efficiency are always at the forefront of our thinking. We don’t have fresh meat or food counters and therefore waste in that area is minimized, this assists in reducing waste streams. This does not mean that we rest on that achievement – we are always looking for ways of reducing waste even further and with Greenstar on board this is a realistic and achievable target for us."