Our plastic bags help us efficiently deliver to our customers, preventing damage caused by spillages, and to keep groceries safe and hygienic as we transport them from our hi-tech warehouses and deliver them to the homes of our customers.
We are trialling alternative methods but we are yet to find a suitable replacement. We've found that paper bags are less reliable (and take more energy to produce), and having no bags at all leads to more waste and, since deliveries take longer, would need more vans on our roads.
Our focus is on making sure we take back and recycle and remake as many bags as we can through our closed loop recycling scheme that means we don't need to use any more plastic - we were the first grocery retailer to create our own recycling system of this kind. We refund customers 10p per bag they return, something we call a Bag Bonus.
You can read more about our closed loop recycling scheme here.