Selfridges to cut plastic waste as consumers support eco-aware businesses

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 8, 2018

Selfridges is continuing its drive to minimise eco-damaging waste with its latest initiative being to remove all single-use plastic bottles of carbonated drinks from its stores.

That follows its announcement last year that it was transforming used single-use coffee cups into its famous yellow carrier bags.

The latest move is both an eco-aware one and a sensible one commercially. The company’s customers skew strongly towards the Millennial age group where saving the planet is a key priority. And the retailer’s appeal also skews particularly strongly towards Chinese shoppers, a group known to be increasingly  environmentally-driven. 

In fact, a report last week, released to coincide with the IFAT Munich trade fair for environmental technologies, claimed that 83% of Chinese consumers are concerned about the impact of plastic waste on the environment with almost two-thirds saying that individual consumers must get involved in eradicating such waste.

Selfridges’ move will clearly go down well with such consumers and builds on the company having spent almost a decade highlighting marine conservation.
 
Alannah Weston, Deputy Chairman of Selfridges Group, said: “Our customers expect us to be responsible and our values underpin this requirement. We have supported the #OneLess campaign from 2016 which, as a result, has seen the Mayor promise to improve access to drinking water across London. 

“We are seeing a huge shift in people’s attitudes to single-use plastic water bottles, and now, carbonated drinks. As a city, we still have a long way to go but we can encourage environmentally conscious behaviour from individuals, to manufacturers, and retailers. At Selfridges we want to continue to support that change and give our customers the choice to buy better.”