Challenging students on Plastic-free Hypermarkets in Taiwan

In 2020, Carrefour Taiwan participated in ATCC (ATONA Case Competition), an annual University business case competition. This year, ATCC engaged +35000 students from 60 Universities. Carrefour Taiwan joined the event to fuel its sustainability roadmap. Out of 75 plastic-free student’s propositions, five were selected for the semi-final stage. One of them finished #2 at the ATCC 2020 and we are very excited to share with you the backstage, the initiatives and the way we’re going to make them happen in 2021!

Carrefour Taiwan partners with ATCC 18th edition to accelerate transition towards a “Plastic-free Hypermarket and Sustainable Earth”

The ATCC is an annual University business case competition. Its aim is to mobilize students to help companies identify innovative solutions and solve business issues. Throughout the campaign, students have to develop business strategies for different business issues.

This is also a good opportunity for Carrefour Taiwan to collaborate with academia. We share common values and it enables us to promote, jointly with universities, University Social Responsibility, calling students to join social participation.

This year, Carrefour Taiwan wanted to identify solutions to nurture its roadmap towards a “Plastic-free Hypermarket and Sustainable Earth” thus answering to the well-known challenge of sustainability in retail.

We kicked-off with 75 teams, eligible thanks to their original proposals.
On June 1st, 5 groups were selected to enter the semi-final stage: each group had to go through a consumer behavior observation in order to receive feedback from clients.

At the end of the selection process, one group was selected to represent Carrefour Taiwan, at the final of the ATCC campaign.

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Reinventing our ways of working with 2500 individuals!

The ATCC Campaign started on April 5^th2020. Even though it took place during the Covid-19 epidemic, the organizers made sure that the campaign was adjusted to the new regulations. Seminars, workshops, presentations and evaluations were all held online (until the semi-finals), and part of the evaluation criteria were even adjusted as the activity pattern changed. We reinvented our ways of working around the online networking platform:

Online ideation
Online Talks to share feedbacks and learnings from the ground
Digitized project management
Online user research, from quantitative behavioral surveys to qualitative customer interviews

We were thrilled to collaborate with the +2500 individuals who engaged in our campaign. Such a broad audience of stakeholders was key to secure the relevance and potential impact of our initiatives.

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The 4R: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Replace

The evaluation of proposals was mostly based on creativity and environmental impact. We worked on the 4R framework to help the teams structure their thinking and secure the applicability of their ideas.

Five groups came up with ground-breaking ideas to nurture our transition towards a “Plastic-free Hypermarket and Sustainable Earth”.

Three of the five groups focused on shopping bags usage and material:

Group#1 created plastic bags with printed lines on it to help customers optimize their bag’s capacity
Group#2 reused discarded fishing nets to make shopping bags
Group #3 transformed recycled clothes into bags

Group#4 focused on securing packaging recycling, right from the store. When customers finish their shopping, they can decide to leave their food packaging at the store. That way, materials such as fruit foam nets and paper boxes can be recycled appropriately, directly at the store.

At this stage, can you guess who represented us? Yes, it was Group#5!

Group#5, CQL Guava, entered the final stage on July 2nd. CQL Guava aimed at reducing agricultural residues and focused on guavas – one of the most popular fruits in Taiwan. Guavas cannot grow without plastic bags and fruit foam nets, otherwise they will grow abnormally or will be devastated by insects. Thus, as a result, the growth of guavas always brings lots of trash.

To solve this problem, CQL suggested farmers to replace traditional plastic bags with PLA bags (i.e., Organic plastic), which greatly reduces plastic consumption. CQL Guava represented Carrefour Taiwan and won the second prize in this national campaign! We are very proud of them.

We should also highlight two key outcomes from the ATCC campaign:

It allowed students to understand how they can make a change in society and create sustainable impact
It enabled Carrefour Taiwan to spot potential initiatives to nurture its transition towards a “Plastic-free Hypermarket and Sustainable Earth” . We are currently considering incorporating the projects as part of Carrefour’s Plastic Reduction Project in the future.

Get ready for the 2021 Edition of ATCC!