ENKHUIZEN – In thousands, the supermarket offers flies over the counter every week. These products alone generate a large amount of waste. The Ecoscan, the app which helps you to separate waste, therefore tells users in which waste bin that supermarket offer goes into. Take a photo or scan the barcode and you can save money and help the environment!

A tour of the leaflets of several supermarkets shows that the supermarket chain Deen offers Maggi soup stand-up bags. “At first glance, they seem to be made of plastic. And that is also the case with regard to the outside, but on the inside there is an aluminum layer. And that means that this bag does not belong in the plastic waste bin, “says Rick Buiten, creator and developer of the app EcoScan.

According to the advice of the EcoScan, this packaging goes into the general waste bin, because it is made of two different materials that cannot be separated.

Supermarket chain Albert Heijn also has a product this week with a packaging whose waste can be separated: the Almhof chocolate mousse. The packaging on the outside of this product goes into the paper bin. And according to the EcoScan, the container containing the mousse belongs to the group of plastic waste and therefore belongs in the plastic waste bin.’

Also part of the plastic waste is the tray of delicious strawberries that is on the front page of their advertising brochure at the Dekamarkt, and the cleaning products Glorix and Andy that are advertised at Jumbo. All these packaging can be separated well and go completely into the plastic waste bin.

All supermarket products this year

Every month, users of the EcoScan app scan 300 to 500 products to find out in which waste bin the packaging goes into. 

The EcoScan now contains more than 130,000 validated barcodes of supermarket products, but that is only part of the whole. Rick Buiten therefore aims for 2020 to add all supermarket products to the EcoScan. “We are busy reading and entering barcodes, but it would save a lot of time if supermarket chains and food manufacturers like Unilever provide the correct barcodes with information about the packaging,” says Rick.

“Supermarkets are already helping customers to make conscious and healthy purchases. How big is the step to help customers consciously separate waste that is generated by purchases in the supermarket? The EcoScan can play a role in this by directing the packaging of these products in the right direction to the correct waste bin, so that an increasing proportion of them can be recycled or reused.”

Download EcoScan

The EcoScan is available for free in Google Play Store and the App Store.