Waitrose Unpacked

In her role as Sustainability Manager at Waitrose & Partners, Danielle was on the core team delivering an industry-leading packaging reduction initiative, Waitrose Unpacked.

The Waitrose Unpacked test launched in Oxford in summer 2019 and saw more than 200 products removed from their packaging to test how customers might be prepared to shop differently in the future, with the aim of saving thousands of tonnes of unnecessary plastic.

The concepts tested included, the largest range of loose fruit and veg of any national supermarket, 28 varieties of dried goods available to buy from refill dispensers, beers and wines on tap, frozen fruit to pick and mix, coffee to dispense and grind in store. Customers were encouraged to bring their own containers, or were able to borrow reusable boxes in store. The test period was initially 11 weeks, but an overwhelmingly positive response saw the trial extended and introduced into three further stores by the end of the year. 

Danielle has been working with environmental specialists to model the environmental impact of the Unpacked across the full supply chain. The findings have not yet been published but it is clear that it has the potential to significantly reduce single-use packaging. 

Additional initiatives which Danielle has worked on include Plan Plastic: The Million Pound Challenge, to fund five of the most innovative, impactful and interesting approaches to tackling plastic pollution. She presented her story during the Ambassadors in Action sessions at the One Young World 2019 Summit in London, and spoke at a One Young World London Caucus on solutions to climate change. Danielle has been a leading figure in the One Young World Plastics Working Group.