Fruits and vegetables have a reputation for being healthy food options yet are sold in an unhealthy amount of plastic packaging. In Canadian supermarkets, 71% of items in the produce section are packaged in plastic and the 27% are often placed in single-use plastic produce bags provided by grocery stores at no extra cost.
Project Overview
The aim of this project is to reduce single-use plastics in grocery stores and supermarkets across downtown Toronto, specifically focusing on plastic produce bags. Additionally, we aim to understand the opportunities and barriers to reducing single-use plastic packaging in the produce section and through control brands (i.e., products whose brands are owned by supermarket chains).
We aim to work with industry, civil society, and the government to reduce this source of plastic pollution through changes in behaviour and suggesting alternatives that benefit people, profits, and the planet.
Prevalence of Single-use Plastics in Grocery Stores
Before the creation of plastic, and its widespread adoption, fruits and vegetables were sold in bulk at grocery stores without the need to package them in plastic or provide single-use plastic produce bags. Nowadays, when shopping at a major grocery store it is very challenging to avoid single-use plastic packaging, and we find a lot of these materials in the environment. Between 2019 and 2020, the proportion of single-use food and beverage packaging litter found on Canadian shorelines nearly doubled from 15.3% to 26.6%.
The recycling rate for these single-use plastics is quite low, with less than 3% of ‘flexible’ plastic packaging, including bags, films, pouches, and wrappers, being recycled across the country. Instead, these plastics find their way into bodies of water and the environment, (including the Great Lakes), and they can lead to negative consequences for wildlife, including mortality.
This Project Aims to
- Estimate how many single-use plastic produce bags are used across Toronto and understand customer behaviour when using these bags.
- Pilot three different types of interventions at grocery stores to see whether they reduce single-use plastic produce bag use.
- Inform how grocery stores could reduce single-use plastic packaging in their branded products (i.e. control brands).
Methods
- We visited 30 locations of 11 grocery store chains in Toronto to quantify and characterize plastic bag usage and customer behaviours.
- We conducted a 2-month pilot project testing 3 levels of interventions at 2 Longo’s stores in Toronto (July to September 2024).
- Level 1: Set up 2 large awareness poster designs in the middle of the produce section at both locations.
- Level 2: Introduced mini awareness signs next to plastic produce bag dispensers and increased the display of reusable produce bags at both locations, and reduced the number of plastic produce bag dispensers at Longo’s York Mills.
- Level 3: Donated reusable produce bags to customers.
Large awareness posters featuring sea turtle and produce imagery.
Mini awareness poster and free reusable produce bags offered to customers.
- To inform the most feasible control brand packaging substitutions away from plastic, we surveyed the aisles of 11 grocery stores, comparing costs and availability.
Results
Objective 1: We estimate that 2,000 single-use plastic produce bags are used daily per grocery store in Toronto. To provide these bags to customers for free, one grocery store chain spends approximately $300,000 per year.
Objective 2: Throughout the pilot project, we saw an overall reduction in the use of single-use plastic produce bags per customer who took a bag. Furthermore, there was a substantial increase in the sales of reusable produce bags from June (control sample) to September 2024, when all interventions had been fully implemented: 538% increase in Longo’s Liberty Village and 260% increase in Longo’s York Mills.
Objective 3: We concluded that switching away from single-use plastic packaging could be readily done for the following product categories where substitutes already exist.
This project is led by Diego Arreola Fernández, incoming fourth year at the University of Toronto, BA – double majoring in Economics and International Relations (with a focus on International Law and Human Rights). He is the 2024 Pollution Prevention Project Fellow, and previously he has been working on environmental education and youth activism through his nonprofit organization, Green Speaking.
For more information, please email Diego Arreola Fernández or Chelsea Rochman.
This project is supported by Community Matters Toronto.
