Coles is opening its most innovative and tailor-made supermarket yet in Sydney, debuting an eco-friendly refill station, doggie ice cream and its biggest-ever Asian range.
On November 11, Coles Local Chatswood opened, part of an expansion of the popular Coles Local format in Sydney, following the successful launch of the concept in Rose Bay in May – with Manly set to welcome a new Local store to the neighbourhood later this year.
In an Australian supermarket first, Coles Local Chatswood debuts a range of refillable ecostore shampoos, conditioners, body washes, and laundry liquids available for customers through a new in-store refill station using bottles made from recycled and sugarcane plastic, eliminating the need for single-use bottles.
Coles Local Chatswood is features more than 200 plant-based food products, ice cream just for dogs, a premium coffee and orange juice station, a macaron, mini gelato and Japanese mochi ice cream parlour, and a dedicated aisle with the largest Asian range in the country.
Coles Chief Sustainability, Property and Export Officer Thinus Keevé said each Coles Local supermarket is uniquely tailored to the specific needs of the local community.
“Coles Local Chatswood is a brand-new neighbourhood supermarket destination with new products sourced from 35 small Sydney suppliers, and innovative features that customers may not have seen before,” he said.
“As we make progress on our mission to be Australia’s most sustainable supermarket, we’re increasingly looking at new and inventive ways to reduce packaging on certain products,
“This new ecostore station is a first for an Australian supermarket, which we hope will resonate well with customers.”
Ecostore Managing Director Pablo Kraus said this was the first time the company had installed a refill station in an Australian supermarket to help reduce packaging waste.
“After successfully launching over 80 Refill stations across New Zealand, we are thrilled to bring the first in-supermarket ecostore Refill Station trial for home and personal care products to Australian customers, at the new Coles Local Chatswood store,” he said.
“People are used to bringing in their reusable supermarket bags; now they can also bring in their reusable ecostore refill bottles to conveniently refill their home and personal care products at the supermarket.”
Supporting a sustainable circular economy, the trolleys at Coles Local Chatswood are made from recycled plastic milk bottles and REDcycle plastics, free recycled carry boxes are available in place of bags, unsold food that cannot be donated to food charities is diverted to organic composting and green energy generation, and team member name tags and uniforms also feature part-recycled materials.
This follows Coles partnerships with Victorian recycling organisations RED Group and Replas to pioneer and install a concrete slab carpark made partly out of recycled soft plastics in Horsham, Victoria.
“This project alone will help repurpose approximately 900,000 pieces of soft plastic, to be used in the carpark at the soon-to-be-completed Coles Horsham redevelopment,” Coles State Construction Manager Victoria Fiona Lloyd said on November 10.
“We’ve worked with RED Group, Replas and RMIT University throughout the whole development process and we’re excited to see how we can use this technology in more of our stores.”
Coles has worked with REDcycle since 2011, becoming the first major Australian supermarket to have REDcycle bins in every supermarket. Since the partnership began, Coles and its customers have diverted over 1.3 billion pieces of soft plastic from landfill.