Diverting More to Waste Less

Our goal is to manage waste from our stores and warehouses more efficiently over time and send increasingly less to landfills. We are doing this by implementing best practices from inside our family of stores and in the wider industry to provide our frontline teams with the tools, guidance and support needed to divert as much waste as possible from landfills.

Two hands holding a paper cut out of a recycling symbol.

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Park bench containing recycling symbol.

From Meat Trays to Furniture: Diverting Expanded Polystyrene in Select IGA Stores

We are always exploring new, innovative technologies and programs we can bring to life to improve our environmental performance. To this end, we launched a pilot project to recover expanded polystyrene from select IGA stores in 2015. Since then, participating stores have been able to divert Read More Styrofoam scraps such as coolers used to transport fish and meat trays that had to be unpacked because they were not sold or donated on time. The packaging is rinsed and dried before being accumulated on pallets or in large transparent bags. They are then picked up by our trucks and transported to the Terrebonne warehouse on Montreal’s North Shore.

The Styrofoam is currently recycled by Groupe Gagnon, a family business that aims to revolutionize the recycling industry. The transformed material is intended for a collection of outdoor furniture containing up to 80% polystyrene and recycled glass, and it can be used in the manufacture of a concrete additive specially designed to increase the strength of concrete. Read Less

Sustainable Shipping: Sharing CHEP Pallets

To make product storage for shipping as sustainable as possible, we ship our products throughout the country on reusable Commonwealth Handling Equipment Pool (CHEP) pallets that we rent in a “share and reuse” system. CHEP pallets are easily identified with their distinct blue colour and do not end up in landfills. They are reused to ship products and take goods between our stores and warehouses.

Warehouse employee driving a forklift lifting a blue pallet stacked with product.

This post is also available in: French