Major supermarket to bring pioneering ‘refill zone’ to York store

Most of us are left askance by the amount of packaging in every supermarket shop.

Now one major store chain is helping to change that – by introducing a pioneering ‘refill zone’ to its York store.

Asda is bringing the option to its Monks Cross outlet in October, it announced today.

First tried at Asda’s Middleton store in Greater Manchester, York is one of four new stores to trial the idea, where shoppers can fill up their own containers of all sorts of products, from cereals to pasta to washing powder.

York’s refill zone will be the largest to date with 18 standalone bays featuring over 70 branded and own-label products in refillable format.

This will include Yorkshire Tea, an increased range of Kellogg’s cereals, new own-label and Nestle cereals, Napolina pasta, and Tilda rice alongside new ‘prefilled’ trials of Radox and Persil.

New product types are being introduced including dried pet food such as Whiskers and Pedigree and additional ranges of snacking, desserts and baking products.

Global first

The store will feature Persil, Radox, Simple and Alberto Balsam products from Unilever in stainless steel reusable bottles.

These will be tested in two refill formats: refill on the go where shoppers can refill their bottle using a machine in-store and, in a global first for Unilever and Asda, ‘return on the go’ where shoppers can pick up pre-filled bottles off the shelf and return them in-store once used.

Susan Thomas, director of commercial sustainability at Asda said: “We know that reducing packaging waste matters to our customers and they have embraced the refill options available at the Middleton store, with many of the products available already exceeding expectations.

“Our ultimate goal is to make refill and reuse a part of every Asda shopping trip and to achieve this we have to make it easy, accessible and affordable for all our customers to shop this way.”

Sebastian Munden, Unilever UK & Ireland’s executive vice president said: “Asda share our ambition and urgency to tackle plastic pollution, so it’s great to scale up our partnership with them and continue to test different refill models in their stores. Including our first ever trial of reusable stainless steel bottles which are available pre-filled on shelf and then dropped off in-store once used.”