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A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a rant about how Pret wastefully insist on handing out unnecessary carrier bags, and so contribute to the vast amounts of rubbish that we produce and fail to recycle. All part and parcel of our love of packaging

This is a real pet-hate of mine, and I decided after one too many shrugs of impotence by Pret staff when questioned about their apparent “policy”, that I would contact Pret Customer services with the following:

Why on earth do ALL of your shops insist on putting single sandwiches boxes in bags. They’re already wrapped up, so it seems entirely unnecessary and extremely wasteful to put it into a plastic bag.

Your staff are usually entirely taken aback when I say I don’t want a bag, so I can only presume it’s company policy.

The amount of rubbish in the world isn’t helped by companies such as yourself needlessly handing out packaging. I can understand the need for bags when buying more than one sandwich, but when it’s just ONE it beggars belief.

I’d like to know whether it is indeed company policy to put even single sandwich purchases in a bag; whether the paper bags you hand out are recycled, and whether you intend to address any of these concerns.

I didn’t really expect much of constructive reply. So, I was rather pleased to receive the following from one of their customer service representatives: Hi Richard,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. I agree that plastic bags etc. should not be provided unnecessarily, in fact our team members are encouraged to only provide plastic carriers where they are needed i.e. when customers are purchasing several items at a time.

I am sorry that these procedures do not seem to have been in practice during your recent visits to Pret A Manger. I have brought these comments to the attention of the Operations & shop Managers who shall address this issue with our teams. Likewise, I have brought your comments to the attention of our Packaging Department for their consideration. Again, thank you for taking the time to let us know your views. Your comments are most welcome & very much appreciated.

So, it’s not policy to hand out bags for small purchases, but that is clearly in contradiction of every Pret I have ever set foot in. Whether an e-mail to branch managers and packaging departments will make much of a difference, I don’t know. I doubt it, as I think it’s an ingrained routine they go through when dealing with a purchase. But then change is always hard.

Regardless, I shall be keeping a close eye on the use of packaging at the nearby Pret here in St. James’. It’d be interesting to hear from others about whether Pret do practice, or start to practice, what their customer services people say they should be doing, ie. only handing out additional packaging when needed. If not, drop me a line below or contact Pret yourself. I’ve also gone back to ask them about the recycled content of their products, which was neatly side-stepped in their response.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 at 9:35 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.