When it comes to making #Just1Change to help fight climate change, a big one can be deciding where to do your weekly shop.

As part of our ongoing climate series, we asked all the major supermarkets to look at their environmental practices and make changes where possible.

We also gave them questions from you, our readers, based on what you wanted to know about their plans for a cleaner future.

It’s our hope these vast companies recognise it’s ‘Time to Shelve’ certain practices which worsen plastic pollution, increase energy usage or contribute to food waste – and to bring forward positive schemes – many of which have already been trialled or promised in future.

Answers to these questions varied across the board, but here we’ll be looking at two of the most popular discount supermarket chains operating in the UK today: Lidl and Aldi.

In their answers to us, it appears Lidl is attempting to make positive changes. We can’t say the same for Aldi, which initially only answered two of the seven questions our readers asked.

Both Aldi and Lidl are chains that came to the UK from Germany offering low prices and alternate-brand versions of popular staples. But we only need to start making some small changes to see big results further down the line.

We decided to focus on plastic, energy and waste and see if there were some minor changes that could be made to help the environment.

Waging war on plastic

For example, we asked all the supermarkets to make pledges surrounding plastic packaging. Specifically, removing plastic bags from tills, removing multipack shrink wrap and fruit and veg packaging as well as swapping plastic bottles for glass.

Both still have plastic bags at the till, but Lidl explained that it is in the process of swapping out plastic packaging for fruit and veg and ensuring 100% of its own-brand packaging will be widely recyclable, reusable, refillable or renewable by 2025.

It was one of the first British supermarkets to charge for plastic bags and, in 2019, introduced reusable fruit and veg bags across all its stores nationwide.

‘Recent action to reduce plastic packaging across our fruit and veg category include the removal of 24 million plastic trays and punnets as well as nearly 19 million plastic tags,’ the company told us.

‘We have also recently announced that from January 2022 we will be replacing all of our single-use plastic bags available for customers to use for loose fruit and vegetables with home compostable alternatives, resulting in the replacement of 275 tonnes of conventional single use plastic.’

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