Being Hong Kong''s largest supermarket chain, we understand that it is important to pay special attention to environmental issues, charity work and historic preservation, because it is our way of supporting the community.
Protecting the Environment
- Wellcome first started its plastic bag reduction schemes in 1996, in addition, for two
consecutive years in 2006 and 2007, Wellcome signed a Voluntary Agreement on Plastic Bag Reduction with the Environmental Protection Department. During these two years, we have used 100,000,000 less plastic bags.
- Wellcome implements a weekly ''No Plastic Bag Day'' every Tuesday. We encourage our customers to donate HKD$0.5 for every plastic bag they use on Tuesday; all proceeds go to the Environmental Campaign Committee for environmental education.
2. Shorter receipts
In March 2007, we reduced the length of our shopping receipts by an average of 20%, equal to
an annual reduction of 7 million metres of till roll every year.
3. Energy conservation
Since 2001, we have installed energy-saving lighting systems. By using energy-saving light
tubes, we have managed to reduce our energy consumption drastically - the energy saved is
enough to last a family of four for 250 years.
Since 2004, over 100 stores were fitted with zoning controls that maintain 1/3 of the lighting
after operation hours. The energy saved is equivalent to 60 years of electricity usage for a
family of four.
4. Reducing air pollution
We have been introducing more environmentally friendly Euro 5 vehicles starting 2008. 16 more advanced Euro 5 eco-friendly trucks will gradually be put to service in phases starting September 2009, amount to 27 Euro 5 trucks altogether from Wellcome’s Fresh Food Centre in total, making it Hong Kong’s largest fleet of Euro 5 eco-friendly delivery trucks.
Wellcome opted to use the newly-designed MAN EGR Euro 5 eco-friendly trucks this time as they are equipped with unique and innovative functions. Compared to Euro 1 engines, MAN EGR Euro 5 can cut emissions by 88% and collectively, the entire fleet of 27 can reduce a total of 273 tonnes of air pollutants per year thereby paving way to a greener
Reuse
When we renovate our stores, we generally reuse as many of the fixtures as possible in other stores. As well, we are currently initiating a programme in our warehouse to use reusable pallet strips to secure products.
We have also been committed to reusing all cardboard boxes since 1997, those that cannot be reused will be recycled. Each year we estimate that approximately 144 tones of cardboard are collected from our stores.
Recycle
Our Fresh Food Centre has implemented a “Heat Recycle” project; we collect waste heat from food processing procedures and use it to heat water for other processes. In addition, we treat on average 19,700 cubic metres of waste water to International Ocean Standard a year – equivalent to almost 10 Olympic sized swimming pools.
Since 2005, we collect and recycle all exhausted printer toners from our stores and are pioneers in promoting the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Programme.
