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Mémoire
Bachelor thesis

How much can bulk stores help reduce carbon footprint by limiting plastic food packaging ?

    2020

55 p.

Mémoire de bachelor: Haute école de gestion de Genève, 2020

English This report focuses on the quantity of food packaging waste consumed by an average single individual, residing in Switzerland. It is based on the household budget survey published by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). This budget survey mentions the food quantities monthly consumed by a single individual and thus, the packaging waste could be computed accordingly. The objective is to compare the packaging waste of an individual grocery shopping in supermarkets with a person going to bulk stores. It aims to show the quantity of packaging reduction by bulk-buying, hence the monthly waste reduction. The main materials used for food packaging are plastic, glass, metal and cardboard. Due to its durability and popularity, this study also measured the carbon footprint emitted by plastic packaging for a single individual. Three analyses have been made. The first estimates that an average individual consumed 2.7 kg of packaging monthly, of which more than a half is plastic. This quantity of plastic yearly emits 105 kg of CO2 emissions. The plastic packaging carbon footprint can be reduced by almost 60% by purchasing in bulk stores. Even if purchasing in bulk stores decrease the amount of CO2 emissions, it implies changing customers habits. Hence, the second analysis compares the buying patterns of supermarkets’ customers and bulk stores’ clients. It reveals that most of the bulk stores customers are small households, while supermarkets customers are larger ones. In addition, there are costs for customers arising from changes, referred to as switching costs. The third analysis estimates the two main switching costs to adopt more environmentally friendly approaches when grocery shopping. Firstly, the monetary costs show that supermarkets are 30% less expensive than bulk stores and offer wider products selection. Secondly, the time-based switching costs indicate that bulk stores’ customers spend weekly 50% more time in grocery shopping. In addition, bulk stores are present in only a few municipalities. The final part of this report brings recommendations to decrease the customers’ switching costs. Several options are possible such as increasing the visibility and products’ variety of bulk stores.
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
Notes
  • Haute école de gestion Genève
  • International Business Management
  • hesso:hegge
License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 329880
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/hesso/documents/315165
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