Sustainable Choices
**Sustainable choices is a key pillar of our broader ESG strategy, focussing on how we best support customers to make more sustainable choices when shopping with us**
Packaging plays an important role in the protection and preservation of our products, ensuring that all products continue to be fresh and safe to use once you get them home. However, this must be balanced with our commitment to using less packaging overall, making the best possible material choices for our packaging.
Plastic Reduction
Asda became a founding member of the UK Plastics Pact in 2018, with the ambition to ensure aiming to make 100% of our own-brand packaging recyclable by 2025.
Our goal is to ensure that all packaging our customers take home when purchasing ASDA own brand products can be recycled, whether at home or in-store, according to the On Pack Recycling Label (OPRL) industry definition of recyclability. Over the past few years, we have made significant progress towards this target and are now focusing on the remaining packaging. We are actively looking for solutions with key suppliers, and we are proactively engaging with external stakeholders to contribute to industry-wide collaboration.
**In 2025, a total of 97.5.8% (2024:97.5%) Asda own brand packaging was recyclable.**
**This comprised of 85.6% recyclable at the kerbside and 12.9% recyclable in large stores.**
The shift toward mono-material, recyclable plastics has improved overall recyclability. Additionally, better data quality on polymer types now allows for more accurate classification.
- Smarter burger packagingA new tray format for our mid-tier burgers, combined with penny stacking, created a more efficient pack size and saved 66 tonnes of packaging.
- Removing Pizza Base BoardsRemoving pizza base boards from some Asda branded D-tier and Just Essentials chilled pizzas is saving 264 tonnes of cardboard each year.
- Repackaging laundry capsulesWe introduced a brand-new packaging format for our laundry capsules, moving from a plastic tub to a cardboard box. Leading to significant supply chain efficiencies: the removal of 105 trucks off the roads annually and a completely recyclable box.
- Little things can have a big impact!A 1g weight saving in plastic punnet for our 300g Tomatoes resulted in a 16 tonne annual reduction in plastic.
- New vacuum-packed packagingRepackaging our Just Essentials fresh beef mince into new vacuum-packed packaging, led to a 60% packaging reduction, removing 43 tonnes of plastic annually as well as being recyclable with bags at large stores.
- Learning from Broccoli UnwrappedSometimes, our efforts to reduce packaging don’t have such positive results—like with our ‘Broccoli Unwrapped’ trial. While customers loved the idea (and were big fans of our naked swedes!), broccoli without its plastic wrap just didn’t stay fresh. Sadly, waste levels for unwrapped broccoli rose to over 25%, compared to around 1% for the wrapped version. But it’s all about trying.
- 26.5 Tonnes of Glass SavedWhile some ideas don’t work out, others are a real win - like when we reduced the weight of our Prosecco bottles by 4.8%, cutting 26.5 tonnes of glass without a single complaint. Cheers to that! And often it’s the little things that can have a big impact.
Reinvigorating Refill
Over the past few years, our refill trial stores taught us a lot about the complexities of scaling refillable packaging. We achieved some success in-store, supported by collaboration with key suppliers and organisations such as WRAP and IGD. However, we experienced operational issues and commercial challenges with our existing approach.
Our research showed that the key barriers, which included cost, convenience, cleanliness, and perceived product quality, have prevented customers from engaging with the refill proposition.
Moving forward, we intend to deliver new, scalable refill and prefill trials that build on our learnings and improve customer uptake, operational feasibility and commercial viability.