Aldi, Helping to Make Ireland Greener

from County Kildare Chamber Chronicle Oct 2020

NEW Chamber Website

Aldi is committed to offering their customers responsibly sourced, quality products at unbeatable prices. Aldi understands that their business growth must go hand-in-hand with a robust Corporate Responsibility policy. They have always aimed to prioritise their ethical and moral responsibilities to the community and environment by adhering closely to their three core values – Consistency, Simplicity and Responsibility. Based on these working principles, their dedicated Corporate Responsibility team has introduced a wide range of projects and initiatives to support local communities and deliver their services in an environmental and sustainable manner. Since Covid-19, Aldi’s Corporate Responsibility team has been focused on supporting local communities in Ireland. Aldi donated food and nonfood products to Kildare frontline workers, including Naas General Hospital, Kildare Army Barracks and Naas Garda Station. They also donated €50,000 of non-surplus food to FoodCloud to help meet increased demand. FoodCloud has helped many local charities in Kildare, such as the IWA Athy, Addiction Recovery Ireland, Curragh Pride FRC, SVP Kildare, Teach Tearmainn Women Children’s Refuge, St James Camino Network and Main Street Food Bank Naas. During these difficult times, Aldi has also increased their efforts with their charity partners, such as the Irish Cancer Society. They donated €65,000 in July as a result of the Irish Cancer Society having to cancel its 5k Colour Dash Runs. In 2019, as part of their Community Grants Programme Aldi donated €500 to eight charities in Kildare including, Gheel Autism Services and Kildare Town Men’s Shed.

In January 2020, Aldi pledged to plant over 100,000 native hardwood trees in Ireland by 2024 in conjunction with Green Belt, a private forestry company. Since December 2019, they have planted over 56,000 trees on sites in Munster and Connacht. Aldi staff helped Green Belt with the planting of trees on each site. A planting site will be located in Kildare for the next planting season. This will promote biodiversity in the community and will reduce carbon emissions.

The production of plastic is increasing globally which has resulted in a rise of plastic waste. As a result of this, minimising plastic and packaging has become an important priority for Aldi. Aldi has been a member of Repak since 1999, supporting them in reducing plastic and packaging waste. Aldi listened to their customers’ concerns and released 6 plastic and packaging pledges, including having 100% of its own label packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2022. Since 2018, Aldi has removed over 600 tonnes of plastic and moved over 870 tonnes of non-recyclable packaging to recyclable packaging.

As a result of their sustainability practices, Aldi was named Ireland’s Most Eco-Friendly Company of the year at the 2019 Checkout National FMCG Awards and Green Retailer of the Year at the 2020 Green Awards.