Earlier this week the Dutch supermarket umbrella CBL published its plans to become more environmentally sustainable. For whatever reason the CBL choose to go public with the weakest element of the plan: stop giving away free plastic bags at the cash register. Mind you: only at the cash register, we still have all those bags at the fruit- and vegetable counters. No clue how much bags we talk about? Plastic bags in itself are a big sales item, so we do not expect them to go away for a long time. Maybe time for some recycled designer bag ideas...
Anyway, the plans are solid in general. By 2020:
- reduce transport CO2-emissions by 20%
- improve energy efficiency by 20%
- green energy 20%
I could not find the baseline, bus I guess that might be hidden somewhere in the plan. Just wait, I found it: "In 10 years time..." Now, that means they will publish the baseline hopefully and report on progress. When I compare these targets against the European targets: "The European Council ... targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% compared to 1990 levels; increasing the share of renewables in final energy consumption to 20%; and moving towards a 20% increase in energy efficiency.", then I conclude that the first CBL target might be weaker than that of Europe, because it only relates to transport. At the same time the baseline of 2010 might make it more challenging. As for energy efficiency and the green energy target, they are both an end state, so here CBL equals Europe. I must say that the Dutch target for green energy is 14% by 2020. So related to that CBL will be outperforming.
Overall a promising sign. One challenge remains: how to get the consumer to reduce his or her footprint. That will be the debate: who is and can be responsible? How to get that consumer pure and honest at the same time.
To put the ambition of the Dutch supermarkets in perspective:
ReplyDelete* This week the country Italy announced to ban plastic bags in the whole country (http://bit.ly/gZoW1y)
* Albert Heijn announced to be sustainable in 2015. If the ambitions include environmental ambitions as also formulated by CBL, the rest does not have to do anything untill 2020.
CBL campaigned against a motion in the Dutch parliament last december to create a very very mimimum for Dutch retailers for sustainability (www.eerlijkesupermarkt.nl). Reading this ambition, I understand why. The plan is that some supermarkets are going to really make an effort, so the rest can wait...For some reason, it does not sound like it will solve the problems uet...