Greening retail convenience

Labelling retail products is not only a slow and labour-intensive process, it is also wasteful, resulting in significant use of ink and paper. As a result, an alternative, electronic shelf labelling (ESL), promises to change this and has become common in other EU nations. ESLs are still not the norm in Ireland, but their use is growing, said Alan Brown, managing director, DIGI Systems.

“We do a lot of business with Musgraves and in their stores, SuperValu and Centra, it would be almost ubiquitous, but a huge amount of people would still be using paper,” he said.

When it comes to customers, they are likely not aware of how laborious a process re-pricing items is, but retailers know it all too well. As a result, initial interest in ESLs was driven by the desire to drive efficiencies.

“People take a lot of things for granted in stores. What goes on to have goods on the shelf is almost invisible to the customer,” Brown said.

Today, another concern is in the mix: the environmental cost of waste, which ESLs significantly reduce.

There are ESLs and there are ESLs, however. Some, for example, use segmented LCD displays, which can be difficult to read and although they do not use a lot of power, they do use it continually. DIGI Group does things differently.

“Our ones are based on e-ink, so you can see them in any light. We’ve installed over three million across the country,” Brown said.

Being based on e-ink technology, as found in e-book readers, DIGI’s ESLs have interesting properties: they can be changed at the touch of a button, but they only use power when updating the display with new information.

“They are battery-powered, but they are better than paper in terms of sustainability,” Brown said.

Brown is not proposing ESLs as a magic bullet, but he said they have a major contribution to make.

“None of these things are perfect and sustainability is a journey. However, there is a huge overhead in paper: the paper itself, the printing, and the backing.”

For retailers not yet ready to move to ESLs, DIGI Group offers paper without backing, which reduces waste more than most people would think.

“With backed paper you have all of this [glossy laminated] backing that can’t be recycled. When you consider that there are a really surprising number of price changes in retail that people mightn’t be aware of, you can see how it becomes a problem.”

DIGI Group offers rolls of adhesive labels that come without backing paper and, in addition, can be cut to any size, thus removing the need to carry multiple label sizes.

“There have been technological advances in adhesives and you instantly have less than half the paper as you get rid of the backing.

“It’s a cost saving too, mainly from the efficiency that one roll can be used for multiple designs. I don’t need a special roll in the printer for [just] one thing and have to keep stocks and stocks of rolls,” he said.

A DIGI Group case study noted that Scally’s SuperValu in Clonakilty saved 2.5 tonnes in waste a year by moving to backingless labels, amounting to 80,000 linear metres of backing not used, and reduced costs by €30,000.

All of this is part of how the shopping experience is changing in response to the demand to be sustainable.

“Retailers are genuinely focused on sustainability today,” Brown said.

This, he said, is because of the role that retailers play in Irish towns and villages.

“Retailers, particularly in rural Ireland, are at the centre of the community and they want to do the right thing. We see it: there is a genuine desire there,” he said.

The next step, he said, was for Irish retailers to follow the example of other countries and introduce packageless purchasing for bulk items.

“We do a lot of other products in the bulk purchase space, such as grain and cereals containers, and we expect that to grow.

It’s uncommon in Ireland at the moment, but we expect that to change. In a sense, people are rebelling against packaging,” he said.