10 ms·

Tesco removes 20M items of plastic from Christmas range

qz2 6y ago
Perhaps they can stop ripping off their customers as well? They have introduced a new clubcard pricing system which means you are penalised heavily for not having one. To have one you have to opt into data collection. We're not talking small price disparity here. Between 30%-50% more expensive on some product lines for not having a clubcard. Edit: to be clear that is 30-50% more expensive than the baseline prices for the same items in other stores.
- topicseed 6y ago
  Yup, made me get one as the prices were That much lower for my usual items.
  - qz2 6y ago
    I decided fuck 'em and went to Asda instead.
    - topicseed 6y ago
      Wish I had one... Waitrose is my other option, so yeh.......
      - qz2 6y ago
        Waitrose is considerably cheaper than Tesco without a clubcard.
        topicseed 6y ago
        No way, Waitrose is incredibly expensive everywhere I lived compared to Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Asda. Up there with M&S. But I guess it also depends on your typical basket...
        qz2 6y ago
        Stick to the Essential lines and it's fine. The quality is also better than the generic fake brand crap that Tesco sell and it's the same price or better. Waitrose essential baked beans for example are waaaay better than any others.
    - krbzsq 6y ago
      I only really live around a Tesco & Sainsbury's, so I was under the impression that generally the 'non-clubcard' prices were more or less in-line with competing supermarkets for most items? Is this wrong? My only other frame of reference really is Sainsbury's which I've known to overprice things anyway.
      - qz2 6y ago
        That's the impression they want to give you. The non-clubcard prices are significantly higher than Waitrose, Asda and Sainsburys.
        mrec 6y ago
        I've just stopped buying anything that displays a Clubcard price. It's pesky but doable for now. That may change, of course; I don't see them getting much pushback on this so I expect them to keep doubling down. A non-Tesco supermarket is going to be a priority next time I move.
- dylan62 6y ago
  Very annoying, but if you want to play the game you can use the app on your phone to sign up and give completely false details (name, address etc). Nothing is posted to you so the false address isn't an issue. And you have the satisfaction of polluting their database with garbage. Or you could just shop somewhere else, but that is a worse option in my case.
  - ionwake 6y ago
    But then they have your phone number and can probably extrapolate your address from that
  - qz2 6y ago
    I certainly wouldn't install an app to go shopping at a specific store to obtain specific advantages. No company deserves loyalty through a scheme like this. Only through decent customer service and reasonable pricing. As for shopping elsewhere, yes. I use Asda now which does not require a loyalty card to get the discount prices and is generally cheaper and better stocked despite being smaller here.
  - purple-again 6y ago
    The cynic in me feels like they wouldn’t care. The deal they have with your phone provider allows them to identify you by the phone you signed up with. The deal they have with Amazon facial recognition let’s them identify you with the cameras you walked past every time you go in the store. The deal they have with the state let’s let track where your license plate was seen this month. And of course they have what they want which is the card in your pocket giving them all of your purchases in one easy column. /s.....hopefully
    - qz2 6y ago
      Actually that's exactly what they and Dunnhumby do.
- Reason077 6y ago
  By not using clubcard, you're leaving money on the table even before the "clubcard prices" were introduced. The whole scheme is basically a cashback mechanism on your purchases. Like another poster said, if you're worried about privacy/data collection/spam, just sign up with false details. Now days, everything is done through the app so you can get all the benefits without using a real identity.
  - qz2 6y ago
    For a 1% return? Hardly worth it. As for the app, I don't want my phone polluted with even more crap. If I had a corporate loyalty app for every shop I wanted to go in, I'd have a hundred apps, a hundred data collection problems and a flat battery. Instead I have one called Apple Pay which works everywhere..
    - Reason077 6y ago
      I'd argue 1% isn't so bad in itself, but it works out to far more than that using the various bonuses and vouchers etc. Personally I find the Sainsbury's scheme (Nectar) better overall, however. All the "vouchers" that multiply your points are applied automatically through the app, rather than having to goof around with scanning barcodes as in the Tesco app. I haven't worked out my exact spend at Sainsbury's this year, but it was probably less than £1000. From that I had enough nectar points to buy £100 worth of wines in a recent promotion, and I still have plenty left over... (points, that is. Most of the wine is gone, haha)
    - snalty 6y ago
      For what it's worth, you can install the Clubcard app, add your Clubcard to Apple Pay from within the app, then uninstall it and the card will stay in Apple Pay.
  - Operyl 6y ago
    If you do this you also need to be sure to pay with cash, or other anonymous cards, because they’ll also link your payment details if I recall correctly (perhaps not this brand, but most others will).
- bb123 6y ago
  I'm normally very careful about my privacy, but I have to say this is one case where I really couldn't care less that they're collecting this data. At least I'm getting rewarded monetarily for it.
- raisedbyninjas 6y ago
  I'm not familiar with U.K. retailers, but these are common at grocers in the U.S. The collected data makes stock purchasing more efficient. Is there any evidence that personal data is monetized in any other way?
  - SifJar 6y ago
    > The collected data makes stock purchasing more efficient. Why does the data need to be personally identifiable for this? Is there a reason a store can't look at total sales volume for a particular product & figure out how many more units to order?
    - raisedbyninjas 6y ago
      Reasoning for storing any data outside of a GUID is so you can recover your account or key it in manually in lieu of swiping the card. Phone numbers are associated with the card here. You can punch in your number to the payment pad and leave your membership cards at home/throw them away. Total sales volume doesn't get the same accuracy of individual shopper habits. I'm not in this sector so somebody else can correct me. Knowing what products each customer tends to buy during cold/flu season or a holiday or some opaque reason allows them to predict demand rather than react to overall trends and current stock amounts. If their data model knows that a small group of heavy purchasers of an item haven't purchased the item recently and are expected to visit the store soon, that demand can be anticipated. If a customer moves, then purchasing habits can be automatically planned for at the new store they begin shopping at rather than waiting for their sometimes infrequent purchasing habits to affect sales at the new and old locations.
  - aboringusername 6y ago
    A false dichotomy. It's not about today but what they can do with the data in 5+ years from now (and yes, it'll be stored for that long). We can't know how data will be manipulated as future technology is developed.
Confiks 6y ago
What I often fail to see mentioned in these kind of articles, is if the removal of plastic introduces some other method of packaging that is even less environmentally friendly (edit: with more carbon emissions). For example in The Netherlands they banned free plastic bags, so now gift and clothes stores give a free paper bag. Paper bags need to be a lot heavier to offer the same strength. They calculated that such a paper bags needs to see 15+ reuses to become more environmentally friendly, which is unrealistic seeing how fast they break. Recycling also favors plastic bags. The only upside is that paper bags are better biodegradable in the environment and don't spread microplastics around. The solution for this particular problem is, of course, that free paper bags should also be banned.
- dkdbejwi383 6y ago
  > The only upside is that paper bags are better biodegradable in the environment and don't spread microplastics around. I think this is quite important. Even if the majority of people were well intentioned and re-used plastic bags, they shed micro plastics during use, eventually they fail and even if you recycle them, there's no guarantee they won't be sold off with other recyclable waste and then dumped or burned.
  - Confiks 6y ago
    I mostly agree, but burning / pyrolysing plastic is not a bad outcome for 'recycling' oil into energy if properly done at scale (including emissions filtering) for electricity / district heating.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >they shed micro plastics during use they do? I thought most of the microplastic pollution is from plastic that made it into the ocean and are broken down by the sun?
    - reaperducer 6y ago
      Vehicle tires shed plastic into the air when you drive. Look at any wall near a freeway. That's not just exhaust turning it black.
madengr 6y ago
Asia is the problem with plastics, as they find their way into waterways. I cringe when I see a street food video with food poured in a plastic bag.
DubiousPusher 6y ago
I like that they aren't just cutting plastic blindly. They are doing things to make that plastic easier to recycle when its needed. Currently in the US, it seems as long as your package is hypothetically recyclable you can stamp it with the logo regardless of the burden it places on the user or recycling company. Not sure if another country has this but I've often wished we had better recycling information on packaging that was driven by recyclers practical experience. It would be nice if companies could put a distinct logo on their package if it was immediately recyclable (aluminum cans) vs requiring some disassembly (cracker boxes with plastic sleeves) vs virtually unrecyclable (soft plastic wrapping around moist foods).
- gruez 6y ago
  >Currently in the US, it seems as long as your package is hypothetically recyclable you can stamp it with the logo I know it's logo consists of the "recycling symbol", but the logo you're talking about is supposed to tell you what type of plastic it is[1], not whether it's hypothetically recycleable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    Interesting. Although, now that it has become the ubiquitous logo to identify recyclables (moron in a hurry principle), they should probably recycle it accordingly.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  In the US, the foggy plastic milk jugs and cleanish number 1 and 2 bottles are the only plastics that are worthwhile to recycle, so there isn't really all that much use in more sophisticated markings.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    > worthwhile to recycle People say this implying that there is something about the material which makes it inherently "worthwhile" and that's just not true anymore. Recycling has advanced quite a bit and these days what makes things not "worthwhile" to recycle can have as much to do with how they are designed and disposed as with the utility of the underlying material. A cottage cheese tub is made from recyclable plastic but it's not "worthwhile" for a recycler to collect them if they aren't rinsed. Cardboard is useful but moreso if flattened. Though not at all if a plastic liner is still glued inside. I encounter people all the time not knowing if a thing is recyclable and if so how to prepare it. The worst part is that people often even put extra effort into recycling but because they don't understand how the recycler consumes the items they actually harm the recycler with improper disassembly. You could have one icon for things like pop cans and milk jugs which are recyclable without modification. Similarly, there could be icons for compound packaging. You might have a symbol that means a box must have a plastic liner removed and the box be flattened. The important thing is consistnecy. People might even begin to shift their shopping habits towards products that came in easy to recycle packages. But consumers can't even really index on that currently because they have to get pretty educated on their local recycler's practices to know this.

qz2 6y ago

Perhaps they can stop ripping off their customers as well? They have introduced a new clubcard pricing system which means you are penalised heavily for not having one. To have one you have to opt into data collection. We're not talking small price disparity here. Between 30%-50% more expensive on some product lines for not having a clubcard. Edit: to be clear that is 30-50% more expensive than the baseline prices for the same items in other stores.

topicseed 6y ago
Yup, made me get one as the prices were That much lower for my usual items.
- qz2 6y ago
  I decided fuck 'em and went to Asda instead.
  - topicseed 6y ago
    Wish I had one... Waitrose is my other option, so yeh.......
    - qz2 6y ago
      Waitrose is considerably cheaper than Tesco without a clubcard.
      - topicseed 6y ago
        No way, Waitrose is incredibly expensive everywhere I lived compared to Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Asda. Up there with M&S. But I guess it also depends on your typical basket...
        qz2 6y ago
        Stick to the Essential lines and it's fine. The quality is also better than the generic fake brand crap that Tesco sell and it's the same price or better. Waitrose essential baked beans for example are waaaay better than any others.
  - krbzsq 6y ago
    I only really live around a Tesco & Sainsbury's, so I was under the impression that generally the 'non-clubcard' prices were more or less in-line with competing supermarkets for most items? Is this wrong? My only other frame of reference really is Sainsbury's which I've known to overprice things anyway.
    - qz2 6y ago
      That's the impression they want to give you. The non-clubcard prices are significantly higher than Waitrose, Asda and Sainsburys.
      - mrec 6y ago
        I've just stopped buying anything that displays a Clubcard price. It's pesky but doable for now. That may change, of course; I don't see them getting much pushback on this so I expect them to keep doubling down. A non-Tesco supermarket is going to be a priority next time I move.
dylan62 6y ago
Very annoying, but if you want to play the game you can use the app on your phone to sign up and give completely false details (name, address etc). Nothing is posted to you so the false address isn't an issue. And you have the satisfaction of polluting their database with garbage. Or you could just shop somewhere else, but that is a worse option in my case.
- ionwake 6y ago
  But then they have your phone number and can probably extrapolate your address from that
- qz2 6y ago
  I certainly wouldn't install an app to go shopping at a specific store to obtain specific advantages. No company deserves loyalty through a scheme like this. Only through decent customer service and reasonable pricing. As for shopping elsewhere, yes. I use Asda now which does not require a loyalty card to get the discount prices and is generally cheaper and better stocked despite being smaller here.
- purple-again 6y ago
  The cynic in me feels like they wouldn’t care. The deal they have with your phone provider allows them to identify you by the phone you signed up with. The deal they have with Amazon facial recognition let’s them identify you with the cameras you walked past every time you go in the store. The deal they have with the state let’s let track where your license plate was seen this month. And of course they have what they want which is the card in your pocket giving them all of your purchases in one easy column. /s.....hopefully
  - qz2 6y ago
    Actually that's exactly what they and Dunnhumby do.
Reason077 6y ago
By not using clubcard, you're leaving money on the table even before the "clubcard prices" were introduced. The whole scheme is basically a cashback mechanism on your purchases. Like another poster said, if you're worried about privacy/data collection/spam, just sign up with false details. Now days, everything is done through the app so you can get all the benefits without using a real identity.
- qz2 6y ago
  For a 1% return? Hardly worth it. As for the app, I don't want my phone polluted with even more crap. If I had a corporate loyalty app for every shop I wanted to go in, I'd have a hundred apps, a hundred data collection problems and a flat battery. Instead I have one called Apple Pay which works everywhere..
  - Reason077 6y ago
    I'd argue 1% isn't so bad in itself, but it works out to far more than that using the various bonuses and vouchers etc. Personally I find the Sainsbury's scheme (Nectar) better overall, however. All the "vouchers" that multiply your points are applied automatically through the app, rather than having to goof around with scanning barcodes as in the Tesco app. I haven't worked out my exact spend at Sainsbury's this year, but it was probably less than £1000. From that I had enough nectar points to buy £100 worth of wines in a recent promotion, and I still have plenty left over... (points, that is. Most of the wine is gone, haha)
  - snalty 6y ago
    For what it's worth, you can install the Clubcard app, add your Clubcard to Apple Pay from within the app, then uninstall it and the card will stay in Apple Pay.
- Operyl 6y ago
  If you do this you also need to be sure to pay with cash, or other anonymous cards, because they’ll also link your payment details if I recall correctly (perhaps not this brand, but most others will).
bb123 6y ago
I'm normally very careful about my privacy, but I have to say this is one case where I really couldn't care less that they're collecting this data. At least I'm getting rewarded monetarily for it.
raisedbyninjas 6y ago
I'm not familiar with U.K. retailers, but these are common at grocers in the U.S. The collected data makes stock purchasing more efficient. Is there any evidence that personal data is monetized in any other way?
- SifJar 6y ago
  > The collected data makes stock purchasing more efficient. Why does the data need to be personally identifiable for this? Is there a reason a store can't look at total sales volume for a particular product & figure out how many more units to order?
  - raisedbyninjas 6y ago
    Reasoning for storing any data outside of a GUID is so you can recover your account or key it in manually in lieu of swiping the card. Phone numbers are associated with the card here. You can punch in your number to the payment pad and leave your membership cards at home/throw them away. Total sales volume doesn't get the same accuracy of individual shopper habits. I'm not in this sector so somebody else can correct me. Knowing what products each customer tends to buy during cold/flu season or a holiday or some opaque reason allows them to predict demand rather than react to overall trends and current stock amounts. If their data model knows that a small group of heavy purchasers of an item haven't purchased the item recently and are expected to visit the store soon, that demand can be anticipated. If a customer moves, then purchasing habits can be automatically planned for at the new store they begin shopping at rather than waiting for their sometimes infrequent purchasing habits to affect sales at the new and old locations.
- aboringusername 6y ago
  A false dichotomy. It's not about today but what they can do with the data in 5+ years from now (and yes, it'll be stored for that long). We can't know how data will be manipulated as future technology is developed.

Confiks 6y ago

What I often fail to see mentioned in these kind of articles, is if the removal of plastic introduces some other method of packaging that is even less environmentally friendly (edit: with more carbon emissions). For example in The Netherlands they banned free plastic bags, so now gift and clothes stores give a free paper bag. Paper bags need to be a lot heavier to offer the same strength. They calculated that such a paper bags needs to see 15+ reuses to become more environmentally friendly, which is unrealistic seeing how fast they break. Recycling also favors plastic bags. The only upside is that paper bags are better biodegradable in the environment and don't spread microplastics around. The solution for this particular problem is, of course, that free paper bags should also be banned.

dkdbejwi383 6y ago
> The only upside is that paper bags are better biodegradable in the environment and don't spread microplastics around. I think this is quite important. Even if the majority of people were well intentioned and re-used plastic bags, they shed micro plastics during use, eventually they fail and even if you recycle them, there's no guarantee they won't be sold off with other recyclable waste and then dumped or burned.
- Confiks 6y ago
  I mostly agree, but burning / pyrolysing plastic is not a bad outcome for 'recycling' oil into energy if properly done at scale (including emissions filtering) for electricity / district heating.
- gruez 6y ago
  >they shed micro plastics during use they do? I thought most of the microplastic pollution is from plastic that made it into the ocean and are broken down by the sun?
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Vehicle tires shed plastic into the air when you drive. Look at any wall near a freeway. That's not just exhaust turning it black.

madengr 6y ago

Asia is the problem with plastics, as they find their way into waterways. I cringe when I see a street food video with food poured in a plastic bag.

DubiousPusher 6y ago

I like that they aren't just cutting plastic blindly. They are doing things to make that plastic easier to recycle when its needed. Currently in the US, it seems as long as your package is hypothetically recyclable you can stamp it with the logo regardless of the burden it places on the user or recycling company. Not sure if another country has this but I've often wished we had better recycling information on packaging that was driven by recyclers practical experience. It would be nice if companies could put a distinct logo on their package if it was immediately recyclable (aluminum cans) vs requiring some disassembly (cracker boxes with plastic sleeves) vs virtually unrecyclable (soft plastic wrapping around moist foods).

gruez 6y ago
>Currently in the US, it seems as long as your package is hypothetically recyclable you can stamp it with the logo I know it's logo consists of the "recycling symbol", but the logo you're talking about is supposed to tell you what type of plastic it is[1], not whether it's hypothetically recycleable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  Interesting. Although, now that it has become the ubiquitous logo to identify recyclables (moron in a hurry principle), they should probably recycle it accordingly.
maxerickson 6y ago
In the US, the foggy plastic milk jugs and cleanish number 1 and 2 bottles are the only plastics that are worthwhile to recycle, so there isn't really all that much use in more sophisticated markings.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  > worthwhile to recycle People say this implying that there is something about the material which makes it inherently "worthwhile" and that's just not true anymore. Recycling has advanced quite a bit and these days what makes things not "worthwhile" to recycle can have as much to do with how they are designed and disposed as with the utility of the underlying material. A cottage cheese tub is made from recyclable plastic but it's not "worthwhile" for a recycler to collect them if they aren't rinsed. Cardboard is useful but moreso if flattened. Though not at all if a plastic liner is still glued inside. I encounter people all the time not knowing if a thing is recyclable and if so how to prepare it. The worst part is that people often even put extra effort into recycling but because they don't understand how the recycler consumes the items they actually harm the recycler with improper disassembly. You could have one icon for things like pop cans and milk jugs which are recyclable without modification. Similarly, there could be icons for compound packaging. You might have a symbol that means a box must have a plastic liner removed and the box be flattened. The important thing is consistnecy. People might even begin to shift their shopping habits towards products that came in easy to recycle packages. But consumers can't even really index on that currently because they have to get pretty educated on their local recycler's practices to know this.