Dixons Carphone to rollout polystyrene packaging take-back service in 'UK first'

Retail giant Dixons Carphone has announced a series of fresh waste-busting initiatives designed to boost packaging recycling and reuse both among its customers and within its own-brand products.

The firm, which also owns Currys PC World, yesterday pledged to use 100 per cent recyclable and re-usable plastic packaging for its own brand products by 2023. And, in what it claims is a UK-first, it also plans to roll out a polystyrene (EPS) take-back service for customers at its stores nationwide, following a successful trial of the EPS take back service across 14 Currys PC World stores this summer.

Dixons Carphone said the service would reduce its carbon footprint by extending the lifecycle of its polystyrene packaging, which is notoriously awkward to recycle at home, and as such often ends up incinerated or landfilled.

The new in-store scheme sits alongside Currys PC World's existing home delivery recycling service which has allowed customers to hand back their packaging to delivery drivers for over a decade. The retailer claims to recycle over a tenth of all consumer product packing polystyrene in the UK and, some of which it turned into insulation panels for housing.

Chris Brown, Dixons Carphone's senior sustainability operations and compliance manager, said the new service made the firm the first "to enable customers to drop off their TV packaging in stores for recycling".

"Now customers can have their polystyrene taken away at delivery or drop it off at one of our stores," he explained. "Whatever they choose we'll take it off their hands and ensure we reuse or recycle it in a responsible way - helping customers do their bit for the planet."

It follows a number of initiatives rolled out by the firm over the past year, such as switching from EPS to cardboard packaging for large domestic appliances, swapping polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic blister trays for paper trays, changing EPS for cardboard pulp, and removing single-use items such as cable ties and plug pin covers from its product line.

As a result, Dixons Carphone said it had removed 1.7 million items of plastic packaging - more than 27 tonnes - from its own brand products over the past year. The firm has already completely removed plastic packaging from its ADX Gaming brand which it described as a "key milestone" towards it 2023 target.

Moira Thomas, group director of sustainability and ESG at Dixons Carphone, said the firm hoped to share its expertise and best practice on cutting waste with the wider retail sector. "We are also pleased to share that work with our suppliers and other retailers in our Product Packaging Guidance as we all work together to reduce the energy and resources used by our industry's operations and become more sustainable," she said.