Esselunga’s Strategy for Sustainability

Antonio Vaccari, Head of Health, Safety, and Environment at Esselunga, was our guest during our Re-think Circular Economy Forum in October. Esselunga is a consolidated Italian food company, arising as a retailer and producer. The concepts of sustainability and circular economy are intrinsic in Esselunga’s business model. In fact, Esselunga also partnered with Tondo during our hackathon Hacking the City and challenged young students and recent graduates to develop new ways to make our cities more circular.


Esselunga’s sustainability strategy is founded on 5 pillars: clients, employees, suppliers, environment, and community. Its main scopes are minimizing CO2 emissions, sustainable packaging, and waste reduction. One of the most important examples of this commitment is the fact that in the last 20 years, Esselunga eliminated secondary packaging by using 2 million reusable and washable cases in internal circuits.


Rethinking packaging

During Re-think, Antonio Vaccari explained to the public the delicate balance between the issue of packaging and food and how Esselunga manages this balance in everyday choices. The company’s sustainable packaging strategy is mainly meant to reduce, recycle and replace plastic mixed with other materials and to decrease the use of over-packaging. At the same time, Esselunga wants to ensure the quality of its products from the perspective of food security, ensuring an appropriate shelf life of its products and therefore reducing potential waste. By 2025, the Company wants to ensure that 100% of Esselunga products packaging is made of compostable, recyclable, or recycled materials.


Esselunga pursues this scope by involving its upstream suppliers and their downstream consumers, using a scientific approach, also supported by the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method: Esselunga everyday evaluates the impact of its packaging choices through indicators, such as plastic and water consumption, CO2 emissions, and circularity.


With the Esselunga FEVBIO Plastic-free purpose project, launched in 2017, the company is committed to replacing the packaging and the labels of fresh products of the Esselunga BIO Line with compostable materials, decreasing the current release of about 137 tons of plastic in the market every year and facilitating the recycling phase for the consumer. The restyling of packaging has been extended to other product lines, like Esselunga’s eggs, by adopting a packaging made of wood pulp, which is entirely recyclable.


Another example of innovative re-design of packaging is the project concerning the Fresh Milk BIO. This project is also a good example of Esselunga’s efforts to make the consumers more conscious about the products they buy. Detailed information about the packaging choices is provided on the front of the milk carton and, through a QR code, it is also possible to understand the methods applied. This action resulted in the reduction of an additional 20 tons of plastic in 2019.


Another project with a significant impact on plastic reduction is the work done on all Esselunga’s private label water, by replacing them with new transparent bottles made of 50% of recycled plastic. With this action, Esselunga reduces the amount of virgin PET placed on the market by 1,000 tons each year. Esselunga also provided some of its stores with eco compactors in order to encourage waste collection. More than 525,000 bottles, equivalent to 12 tons of plastic, have been collected since late 2019.


Another project, unique in Italy, has been developed in partnership with Fater, a company best known for the Pampers brand. This project, which was launched at the beginning of 2020, involves the collection and recovery of used diapers, through Fater Smart. It developed the world’s first process for recycling used hygiene absorbent products. Through this process, used diapers can be transformed back into materials such as cellulose and plastic, leading to the production of children’s books and toys. Esselunga and Pampers invited the city of Verona to collect used diapers using an App and special bins in Esselunga stores.


The diapers were taken to an innovative recycling plant where the cellulose was transformed into paper. Just in the first month, 250,000 diapers were collected and 5,000 books were printed and given to the families who contributed to the collection. In November, a new playground was inaugurated in Verona. Through this project, since the beginning of 2020, more than 85,000 kg of diapers have been collected, preventing the emission of 35,000 kg of Co2.


Fighting Food Waste

Esselunga also checks the environmental impact of its physical stores and production plants. In stores, it is possible to contain most of the waste by making punctual and effective planning of orders, thanks to a deep knowledge of costumer’s purchasing habits. In the production plants, it is possible to contain the surplus representing a potential waste through effective planning of industrial processes and the valorisation of all ingredients and raw materials.


Food surplus, such as unsold food, returns, and food scraps, can be donated, used as animal feed, or reused for energy. Esselunga has also a well-established partnership with Banco Alimentare: Esselunga donates its surpluses to people in need. In 2019 Esselunga donated more than 1.700 tons of food, 42% more than the previous year, and the equivalent of 3,4 million meals.


Finally, Super Foodies is an educational project involving 2.549 children through more than 200 educational labs. Through these workshops, the Company raised awareness about proper nutrition and provided accurate information about food storage. That is in order to promote responsible consumption and reduce food waste.


Within the scope of food waste reduction, Esselunga believes that consumers can actively contribute as well. So, through its website, Esselunga provides guidance from food and purchasing conscious choices to recycling.


From redesigning its approach to packaging to reorganizing its production plants, to fighting food waste by helping those in need, Esselunga has therefore implemented a wide range of strategies to become more sustainable and to follow the principles of the Circular Economy.


You can read more about this topic in our report on Re-think Milan 2020. Or you can watch the full video of Antonio Vaccari’s speech here:


Francesco Castellano

Francesco Castellano holds a Master degree in Business Administration, and he has gathered almost twenty years of experience in research, finance, consulting, and business management. During this time, he was engaged in different types of projects as a consultant at Bain & Company, launched Uber operations in Turin, and worked in the FP&A department at General Electric.Lately, he founded To... Read more

Francesco Castellano holds a Master degree in Business Administration, and he has gathered almost twenty years of experience in research, finance, consulting, and business management. During this time, he was engaged in different types of projects as a consultant at Bain & Company, launched Uber operations in Turin, and worked in the FP&A department at General Electric.

Lately, he founded Tondo, a cluster of organizations focusing on spreading Circular Economy approaches and concepts, and supporting companies in the transition to a clean and circular future. Francesco is also the ideator and coordinator of the Re-think Circular Economy Forum, a format of events organized in many different locations in Italy showcasing the most relevant Circular Economy solutions.

Francesco has been a guest speaker at different universities and events, like Federico II University, Bocconi University, LIUC - Cattaneo University, Pavia University, Padua University, Catholic University, IPE Business School, 24ORE Business School, Campus Party, Torino Stratosferica, Visionary Days.

Francesco is passionate about Circular Economy, Cleantech Innovations, Venture Building and Entrepreneurship.

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