Supermarkets, shoppers and our planet: who's being helped?

New year, fresh start: it’s time to rethink how supermarkets could do more to allow consumers to make a strong environmental impact.

Supermarkets, shoppers and our planet: who's being helped?

Supermarkets have a huge influence in our lives. Every day, supermarkets are supposed to be helping the environment and supporting us to save money. However, this last year, the increased cost of living prevented any savings from happening. Not only that, but being conscious about sustainable buying also took a hit. Not being presented with the innovative sustainability options in the first instance makes things harder to actually make a constant difference and sustain that. 

The people from businesses who control these options need to do more to make things easier for shoppers on a long term basis by listening to what the public want to achieve each time they visit their local supermarket. 

I think as many people as possible should think of ways to make more environmentally conscious consumer buying decisions. Since it's a New Year, this is the perfect opportunity to purchase less plastic wrapped goods. It shouldn't have to be difficult and more expensive to make positive and simple choices, especially when those choices work out more cost effective by cutting down on landfill waste and ocean pollution. However, it's up to these big businesses and supermarkets to support this as much as they can. The majority of these huge corporations that we put our trust into simply need to hurry up. They need to be more present and focus on the now and not just announce ambitious plans for the future like it sometimes seems they often do at their Annual General Meetings. 

Why have ASDA only got one sustainability store when they currently have 632 retail sites around the UK? Is that not a big problem? The numbers speak for themselves, so I do ask why this is still yet to accelerate when it has a track record of making a positive difference?

What’s increasingly annoying and disappointing is how supermarkets reported how they made so much unprecedented profit in increased sales during the panic buying of 2020 - as much as Christmas sales during the festive period. So has the public received that money back through food prices, because it doesn’t seem like it? 

It would be great to see more stores making an impact with their stances and working to create more sustainable options for the every day shopper. Seeing as the price of so many products are constantly increasing and for the prices for the majority of items being unjustifiable, hopefully supermarkets improve for the year ahead and move in the right direction.

Header Image Credit: Flickr

Author

Gregary Burnsen-Hicks

Gregary Burnsen-Hicks Contributor

Interviewer/presenter, theatre/event reviewer, actor/performer, entrepreneur and journalist for Voice Magazine.

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