Kaufland Romania – the first national infrastructure for collecting personal care and housing products

According to a study conducted by Kaufland Romania and IZI Data on the behavior of local selective collection, 69% of respondents say they recycle at least once a week.

Out of these, 28% say they recycle daily. Collection in view of recycling in Romania thus becomes a necessity. In this context, in order to encourage and support the behavior of consumers to protect the environment, Kaufland Romania expands its infrastructure for recycling personal care products and housing (PET, HDPE and LDPE plastic) in all 152 stores in Romania and the 7 from the Republic of Moldova.

“Kaufland Romania applies the principles of sustainability in everything it does. By the power of example, we want to sound the alarm that the place of packaging is exclusively in the trash, for a cleaner and healthier world, with our partners and all those who step on our doorstep. The last two years have shown us that Romanians recycle, if they have the necessary infrastructure at hand. I am glad that we managed to bring it closer to them, the frog-like infrastructure being now available in every Kaufland store in the country “, said Valer Hancaș, Director of Communication & Corporate Affairs Kaufland Romania.

The company’s goal is to become the most accessible and convenient destination for recycling and to reward responsible behavior. Thus, for every three containers of personal and household care products brought to the installation in the form of a frog in stores, customers will receive a coupon with discounts of up to 50% on products in the campaign for that month. Also, the results of the study show that 57% of Romanians appreciate when environmental protection programs are supported in the private sector, and 48% mention specialized recycling centers provided by supermarkets as a place to store recyclable waste.

Among the most commonly collected materials are plastic (81%), followed by paper and cardboard (68%), glass (65%), batteries (56%) and metals (44%), the main motivation being to protect the environment. and reduce pollution (73%). In the last two years, through the Kaufland recycling system available in Romania, over 300,000 recyclable containers have been collected. For other types of packaging, customers also have at their disposal the TOMRA selective wrapping machines, installed in the parking lot of Kaufland hypermarkets, where normal PET (up to 3 liters), glass and aluminum cans (with volume) can be recycled. up to 1 liter). In 2021, over 1.5 million customers used the 152 vending machines provided by Kaufland Romania, recycling over 10 million packaging.

Collecting the used recipients – Approaches

Subsequently, the packaging of hygiene and cleaning products is sorted and recycled with the help of the two specialized partner companies – Green PC Ambalaje and FEPRA. The extensive process consists of three stages:

• sorting materials at the automatic station;

• preparation for recycling;

• actual recycling, by thermoforming.

Study methodology

The national study was conducted between April 10-15, 2022, by IZI data for Kaufland, among a sample of over 1000 self-administered online questionnaires among the digitized urban population aged 15 to 65, Internet users. National urban representation by gender, age and region. Environmental strategy REset Plastic The Kaufland Romania project is part of the REset Plastic initiative, the integrated strategy developed internationally by the Schwarz group on plastics. The holistic approach ranges from avoidance, design, recycling and disposal to innovation and information. This will reduce the use of plastic and close the circuits. More information can be accessed at: www.kaufland.ro/resetplastic. By 2025, Kaufland aims to limit the consumption of plastic by 20%, and 100% of the packaging of its own branded products to be made of materials that allow a maximum level of recyclability.