This morning, Lidl Ireland announced local aspiring artist, Huda Shareef, as a winner of its national sustainability colouring competition. Handpicked from more than 3,000 entries, Huda’s design will feature on a special edition batch of Lidl Ireland’s heavy-duty reusable shopping bags made with 100% recycled plastic. Huda’s sustainability-focused design is one of five set to feature on the special edition reusable bag range, which will be available across all 210 Lidl stores throughout the island of Ireland from August.

Earlier this year Lidl Ireland hosted a nationwide competition to help launch its new reusable shopping bags made from 100% recycled plastic and to spark the conversation around the over-reliance on plastic. The competition called on budding artists from across the country to create a unique design for the reusable shopping bags with a focus on the theme of sustainability. Entrants were encouraged to submit a drawing, sketch or painting of what one of the R’s of Sustainability means to them – choosing from the theme ‘reduce’, ‘reuse’ or ‘recycle’.

Congratulating Huda on her win, Daniel Kelly, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Lidl Ireland, said:

We are incredibly proud to be leading the way in sustainability in the Irish retail space. This initiative alone will see the elimination of 6.3 million ‘bags for life’ from circulation on the island of Ireland each year. With that in mind, we were delighted to see our recent competition spark the all-important conversation around sustainability and would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who entered the competition. Huge congratulations to our five carefully chosen winners who’s designs will feature on our 100% recycled plastic reusable bags from August.

The introduction of Lidl’s reusable 100% recycled plastic bags is the retailer’s latest move in tackling plastic waste to protect the planet as part of Lidl’s ‘A Better Tomorrow’ sustainability strategy, and complements a range of other in-store initiatives introduced by the retailer over the last number of years. This includes offering more loose fruit and veg, providing reusable fruit and veg bags and offering in-store recycling bins.

Under its award-winning sustainability strategy, the retailer has made a number of Plastic Pledge commitments which include eliminating single use plastics, using 20% less plastic packaging by 2022 and having 100% recyclable own-brand packaging by 2025. The theme of the colouring competition was also aligned with Lidl’s Reset Plastic approach which focuses on Reduce, Redesign, Recycle, Remove and Research.

Make sure to keep an eye out from August to see all 5 winning bag designs in your local Lidl.

Notes:

• The recycled plastic used to make Lidl’s reusable shopping bags is recycled plastic from Lidl stores across Europe.

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