Kolonial.no replaces plastic bags with more eco-friendly cardboard boxes

Changing the way we shop groceries

As Norway’s only pure play online grocery retailer, Kolonial.no wants to change the way consumers shop for their groceries. As part of that, the company has high ambitions regarding the environment. Kolonial.no has already made good progress on food waste; its in-house bakery is able to bake to order resulting in zero waste and, across the wider business, food waste has halved in each of the past three years. On delivery logistics, the company leverages AI to set efficient logistic routes to reduce carbon emissions from its biofuel-powered vans, and have started piloting all electric vans. Now, a new milestone has been achieved as the company switches from plastic bags to cardboard boxes for their grocery deliveries, reducing the carbon footprint by over 40% per box.

Our goal is to create the world’s most climate-friendly shopping experience. Ceasing to use plastic bags for deliveries is one step in that direction as we continue our work to cut out plastic in all aspects of our business and to strive for ways to reduce our emissions across the entire organization.

Listening to customers…

In the true spirit of being customer centric, Kolonial.no noticed that a lot of customers were questioning the use of plastic bags for deliveries. In response, Kolonial.no piloted cardboard boxes for some deliveries last year to evaluate the benefits.

…made both ethical and commercial sense

The ambition was to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and better protect the groceries during transportation. With an external consultancy calculating the carbon footprint, the results were convincing - not only were cardboard boxes considered to be the most climate-friendly alternative for Kolonial.no's value chain, it was also a commercial improvement as one cardboard box replaces three plastic bags and better protects the groceries. 

Looking ahead

While this initiative is a significant step in the right direction and reduces Kolonial.no’s usage of plastic in deliveries by 95%, frozen groceries are still being delivered in plastic bags. The company is working hard to change this and will launch several initiatives in 2020 which are both climate-friendly and will further improve the quality and efficiency of their customer offering. 

Watch the video below to see how simple it is to fold the carboard box for recycling.