Locally-owned supermarket Spinneys has announced it is trialling the company’s first bottle ‘return and reuse’ waste scheme, as part of its ‘No Time for Waste’ sustainability programme. In partnership with Hawa, a UAE-born sustainable atmospheric drinking water producer, Spinneys aims to inspire its customers to take action and lead a more circular way of living.
The trial, which kicked off on September 26, will run until the end of December 2022 and encourages shoppers to return their empty glass Hawa bottles to customer service teams at five participating Spinneys stores in Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah. From there the bottles will be returned to Hawa’s manufacturing facilities, inspected, and industrially cleaned ready to be refilled and stocked on the supermarket’s shelves again. Any bottles not selected for reuse will be sent to a glass manufacturer to be recycled as waste feed to save energy in the production process.
The initiative forms part of Spinneys’ ‘Let’s Close the Loop’ campaign, which raises awareness of systems in the UAE that provide an easy solution for customers to get rid of their waste responsibly, and in turn, enables materials to be reused or repurposed. Spinneys’ customers that partake in this trial will also enjoy an AED 1 discount voucher for each bottle they return, off their next hawa® purchases.
Sophie Corcut, Sustainability Lead at Spinneys commented: “We are delighted to partner with Hawa on this project – a great example of how we can test and learn to build towards a Circular Economy for packaging materials in the UAE. At Spinneys we are always looking to reduce the waste we produce and make it as easy for customers as we possibly can to build towards a more sustainable shopping journey.
Gregory Sauvage, co-founder at Hawa added: “Our mission is to ‘make the world greener’ by creating pure, fresh, sustainable drinking water that is good for not only our customers but the planet too. Although glass is more costly and energy-consuming than plastic to produce, it is designed to be reused. This reuse system saves raw materials, energy, and CO2 emissions because it reduces the fossil fuels used to produce new bottles. Bringing a new water source harvested and bottled locally from an infinite humidity reservoir around us is a great step for the UAE sustainability journey and for our future generations water security”