Recycle your Christmas tree with Waitrose & Partners UAE

Waitrose & Partners UAE has teamed up with Tadweer Waste Treatment LLC Dubai, to offer customers an environmentally-friendly way to say goodbye to their Christmas trees. Instead of being sent to landfills, and in a bid to reduce environmental waste, the trees will be recycled into fertilizer at Tadweer’s composting facility.

Shoppers can drop off their Christmas tree at any Waitrose store until 15^th January 2021. The trees must be real pine and undecorated so they are ready to be sent to Tadweer on 16^th January for composting, and later used as fertilizer at UAE farms.

By using sustainable and integrated systems that comply with the best international standards, Tadweer is paving the way to guarantee the ‘self-production’ of fertilizer for the region’s local agriculture sector. This in turn will contribute to the reduction of the cost and also the environmental and health risks associated with the collection and transportation of organic waste.

“At Waitrose, we place the highest value on environmental responsibility and are always looking at ways to enhance our offering for a healthier future, for people and planet. We believe that by inspiring our customers to shop in a more sustainable way, we can help shape a more secure food future for everyone, and make waste a thing of the past”, said Sunil Kumar, CEO of Fine Fare Foods which runs Waitrose UAE.

As part of Waitrose’s Partners Against Waste sustainability programme, the team continues to make significant progress through numerous initiatives – this includes improving its employee shopping policy, investing in its ordering systems, and the introduction of a 25 fil plastic bag charge across its stores in the UAE.

Waitrose has also committed to making its own-brand packaging reusable, widely recyclable or home compostable by 2023 and has pledged to:

• Remove 20% of plastic from its own-brand ranges by the end of 2021
• Ensure branded and own-brand plastic packaging contain at least 30% recycled content by 2021
• Phase out non-recyclable plastic from all branded and own-brand packaging by 2021
• Reduce the amount of own-brand packaging, including plastics, by a third by 2023

“The Christmas tree composting initiative underscores our commitment to reduce our environmental impact, while also meeting the needs of our growing conscious consumer base. At Waitrose, we will always strive to make as positive and sustainable an impact in everything we do”, he concluded.