Asda sets out new plans to reduce plastic waste

Asda, one of the UK’s largest food retailers, has become the latest supermarket to announce immediate plans to reduce plastic waste in its stores.

The supermarket’s new plan, released this week, pledges to reduce the amount of plastic in its packaging by 10 percent this year.

It will do this by implementing a range of measures, including replacing 2.4 million plastic drinking straws with paper; launching reusable coffee cups; and phasing out single-use carrier bags.

All single-use cups and plastic cutlery will also be removed from its offices in 2018, and in stores by the end of 2019.

Read the ClimateAction story - “Asda sets out new plans to reduce plastic waste.”

Turnbull eyeballs energy bosses kids himself on solution

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull “eyeballed” the heads of Australia’s biggest retailers over the scale of consumer bills on Wednesday and would like you to believe that they blinked.

PM Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister
Josh Frydenberg talked with big energy
retailers about costs to consumers.

Truth be told it was more of a knowing wink than a blink, and it is likely that all Turnbull achieved is to kill the size of discounts available to smart consumers. There is not a snowflake’s chance in hell (or a coal boiler) that the big utilities are taking a haircut on this.

The fundamental problem – the high price of electricity – remains unaddressed because the Coalition will not deal with issues such as long term energy policy, or the legal rorting of wholesale markets by an oligopoly of generators, some of them the same mob that turned up to look concerned and contrite in Canberra.

The heads of AGL Energy, Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia, and five other leading retailers along with their lobby group, met with Turnbull, federal Treasurer Scott Morrison and energy minister Josh Frydenberg, to discuss retail market practices that have padded company profits at the expense of consumers.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Giles Parkinson and Sophie Vorrath - “Turnbull eyeballs energy bosses kids himself on solution.”