We all have probably visited NTUC Fairprice at least once to do our grocery shopping. Let’s look at the organization’s environmental conservation efforts.
1. Waste and Recycling
As part of FairPrice Cares! Campaign, customers are encouraged to recycle drink cans and PET plastic bottles as well as utilise reusable bags for their shopping.
The annual Share-a-Textbook Project which FairPrice runs, ensures that school textbooks are reused by a new generation of students. 2 million books have been recycled in this way since the programme started in 1983. This not only benefits students who cannot afford to buy brand new textbooks but also reduces wastage of perfectly good textbooks, and hopefully saves paper!
2. Encouraging Customers To Go Green
Customers who bring their own bags when they shop with FairPrice are rewarded with a 10-cent rebate with a minimum purchase of $10. From helping to save 6 million plastic bags in 2010, FairPrice has seen a substantial 10% increase year on year, meeting their target with 6.6 million in 2011, 7.3 million in 2012 and most recently, 8 million plastic bags saved in 2013 through this initiative.
The Green Lifestyle campaign encouraged customers to go further to shop, choose and think Green. As part of the campaign, FairPrice partnered with Phillips’ ‘Change a Bulb’ programme, where each old light bulb that customers brought to the store was replaced with an energy saving version by Phillips.
3. No Shark Fin Products
Over the last 30 years, the number of people eating shark’s fin has risen from a few million in the 1980’s to more than 300 million today. Research indicates that each year, the fins of up to 73 million sharks are harvested and sold, mostly for shark fin soup. Sharks are often killed just for their fins and this known as “sharkfinning”. Sharks are often dragged onto fishing boats while they are still alive and a knife with a hot blade is used to slice off all of the shark’s fins. Then, the shark is thrown back into the ocean still alive to bleed to death – or drown. It sounds like a cruel act doesn’t it? Thankfully, some organizations recognize this and FairPrice is one of them. 2012 was the last year that shark fin products were sold in FairPrice.
There are many NTUC FairPrice outlets located around Singapore and since we tend to visit NTUC FairPrice rather often to shop for groceries and other necessities, it is nice to know that the business also plays an active role in environmental conservation.