RECAPP, Veolia’s digital recycling solution for individuals and businesses, has forged a new partnership with locally-owned supermarket Spinneys to offer shoppers incentives for returning recyclable items such as plastic bottles, metal cans, and tins to its stores.
The partnership, which makes Spinneys the first retailer in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to partner with RECAPP in order to provide in-store collection points, is aimed at making recycling in the country more effortless, sustainable and rewarding. Moreover, the initiative seeks to generate valuable data on the volume of materials returned for recycling, which will help better understand the future recycling solutions needed in the retail industry.
The project, which kicked off in November, encourages shoppers to return their used plastic bottles and metal cans and tins to recycling bins at participating Spinneys stores. From there, the waste will be sent to local manufacturing facilities, inspected, and industrially cleaned, ready to be reused and made into new materials, including cushions and quilts.
Jerome Viricel, General Manager of RECAPP at Veolia Near & Middle East, said, “We are pleased to join forces with Spinneys with a shared goal of raising awareness and trust in local recycling practices. While contributing to the UAE’s efforts to reduce all forms of pollution, our aim is to benefit both the environment as well as the customers. As part of our collaboration, RECAPP has already started collecting all kinds of plastic bottles, metal cans, and tins from Spinneys.”
The CEO of Spinneys UAE, Sunil Kumar, said, “We are delighted to partner with RECAPP on this project as together we strive for a circular waste management system which supports the growth of the region’s recycled plastics sector. At Spinneys, we’ve been doing a great deal to reduce plastic consumption and production, but in order to reach a circular economy, we need a variety of stakeholders throughout the entire supply chain to participate. This partnership with RECAPP is a perfect example of how we can do better, together, to help save our planet.”
The new collaboration with Spinneys will further strengthen RECAPP’s mission to keep recyclable materials within the UAE and support the country’s efforts in reducing plastic and other forms of pollution both inland and in the sea.
RECAPP was launched by Veolia Near & Middle East in November 2020 and has grown into a community of more than 40,000 registered users, having collected 500 tonnes of recyclables, including 25 million bottles and cans. Initially, a door-to-door recycling app for households, RECAPP last month launched the first B2B digital recycling platform in the UAE, GoRECAPP.com, which enables businesses to deploy recycling boxes on their premises.
The UAE has adopted several environment-friendly waste management solutions and taken significant measures to boost the circular plastics economy. In line with these efforts, the country has joined the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) to End Plastic Pollution, which aims to eliminate plastic pollution by 2040.
The RECAPP-Spinneys initiative also contributes to the UAE Circular Economy Policy (2021-2031), whose objectives include promoting a circular economy and sustainable consumption production patterns that reduce environmental stress and meet basic needs.
Customers who visit the participating stores – Meydan, Umm Suqeim, Trade Centre Road, Layan, Motor City and Khalidya can enter a weekly prize draw by scanning QR codes found on the recycling bins to win SpinneysFood hampers.