Supermarket encourages shift in shoppers' environmental behaviour
Tesco is to reward customers with Clubcard points for cutting plastic bag use to give shoppers incentives to be greener.

The initiative is the first in a raft of schemes that the grocer is working on to use the Clubcard to encourage consumers to do their bit for the environment.

Clubcard holders will gain points for every new Tesco carrier bag they do not use and be encouraged to fill up their own bags or reuse old supermarket ones as an alternative.

Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said: 'Clubcard has changed the way we serve customers over the past 10 years and made us a more responsive business. Now I believe we can use it to respond to the very real concerns people have over environmental issues, such as carrier bags, and bring about a major shift in behaviour.'

Leahy added that Tesco planned to cut the number of bags it hands out by 25 per cent over the next two years, which would equate to a billion fewer bags a year. He said that the scheme was about Tesco taking 'a more carrot than stick approach' to reward positive behaviour from customers rather than trying to force change.

Tesco will launch the scheme across all stores from August 14 and will back it up with a television campaign featuring celebrities using other items to carry their Tesco shopping - jockey Frankie Dettori, singer and actress Martine McCutcheon, comedian Ronnie Corbett and magician PaulDaniels (pictured above, left to right). By the end of September, all Tesco's carrier bags will be degradeable.

In an exclusive ICM poll for Retail Week, shoppers voted Tesco the most environmentally friendly big supermarket (page 11). Twenty-eight per cent of those surveyed cited Tesco as the greenest grocer, followed by Asda with 18 per cent, Sainsbury's and Waitrose at 16 per cent and Morrisons at 12 per cent.

Tesco has been making a concerted environmental push this year. In May, Leahy unveiled a 10-point strategy, Tesco In The Community, which outlined plans to invest£100 million in renewable energy to cut consumption by half in its stores by 2010 and to roll out automatic recycling machines to stores.

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