ALDI sets sustainability goals

ALDI has officially become the latest grocery chain to announce its desire of a sustainability push throughout its company.

The Batavia, Ill.-based grocer plans to make all of its private label packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, while cutting packing materials for those products by 15 percent over the same period.

"ALDI has never offered single-use plastic shopping bags. And while we're pleased that we've helped keep billions of plastic grocery bags out of landfills and oceans, we want to continue to do more," said Jason Hart, CEO of ALDI U.S. "The commitments we're making to reduce plastic packaging waste are an investment in our collective future that we are proud to make."

According to the company, these new goals are an extension of the company's existing sustainability initiatives. For more than four decades, ALDI U.S. has never offered single-use plastic grocery bags, and shoppers have brought their reusable bags.

By company estimates, this progressive business decision has helped keep approximately 15 billion single-use plastic bags out of landfills and oceans. In 2018, ALDI recycled more than 250,000 tons of materials, including paper, cardboard, plastic and metal. Through this recycling effort, ALDI avoided the greenhouse gas equivalent of 8,094,533 gallons of gasoline.

 In July 2018, ALDI partnered with How2Recycle, a standardized labeling system, to empower its customers to recycle.