“Unacceptable!”: Shoppers threaten to boycott Coles over hot cross buns
Coles shoppers have threatened to boycott the supermarket over the sale of hot cross buns individually wrapped in plastic.
Melbourne woman Caroline Lambert shared a photo of “loose fruit hot cross buns” packaged in plastic boxes on Wednesday.
“This plastic-fest was spotted in a Coles supermarket in Melbourne Central this morning. Super depressing Coles,” Ms Lambert captioned the post.
“Your customers want you to do better with your environmental responsibilities.”
It didn’t take long to spark a response, with over 15,000 people joining the “Leave It On The Shelf” campaign, promising to boycott Coles and other stores over their excessive use of plastic.
After seeing Ms Lambert’s post, low-carbon charity 1 Million Women announced it was relaunching the anti-plastic campaign on Saturday.
“We’re bringing back our Leave It On The Shelf campaign. We’re all pledging to leave plastic packaged fruit and veg on the shelf to show supermarkets that this sort of this is unacceptable!” the charity wrote on Facebook.
“Maybe we need to include hot cross buns!”
Many have taken to social media to slam Coles.
“I’ve shopped at Coles for 35 years but this is driving me away,” one woman wrote on the supermarkets Facebook page.
“It might take more effort but I will abandon Coles and Woolies if you don’t lift your game. Shame on you.”
Another woman wrote: “Pretty disappointed at Coles for this overuse of single use plastic! How ridiculous!”
After one woman accused Coles of “over-packaging” on Twitter, the company said it was “making every effort to minimise packaging as much as possible”.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, a spokeswoman from Coles said: “We have placed the single buns in recyclable packaging so that we can give customers the option of buying a single hot cross bun.
“The recyclable packaging keeps them fresh in stores where we don’t have single item display units where customers can pick them up using tongs.”
“The packaging is recyclable in kerbside recycling bins. While this is not how our hot cross buns are generally packaged, to offer convenience a small number of stores have packed buns in this way.
“We are constantly reviewing our packaging to make it more environmentally friendly.”