Carrefour to digitise all of its paper catalogues for Paris and the Lyon area

Carrefour has been experimenting with doing away with its paper catalogues for its Lille and Soyaux hypermarkets since June, and for its Market supermarkets in Lons-le-Saunier and Rognac since August. It is now going even further in its drive to tackle waste paper by ending the anonymous distribution of its catalogues in the Paris and the Lyon area.

Carrefour has announced that it will end distribution of its paper catalogues for all of its Paris and Lyon stores, starting on 17 January 2022.

Over the next two months, customers will be asked to say how they would like to receive their catalogue (by email, SMS or WhatsApp) by visiting carrefour.fr/defi-catalogue and stating their preference. If some customers still want to receive the paper version of the catalogue, they will be able to say so, and Carrefour will send it to them by post. The catalogues are also available on YouTube and Facebook.

This new initiative is being rolled out to all Carrefour hypermarkets and Carrefour Market supermarkets in these two cities (a total of 35 stores). Potentially, nearly 1000 tonnes of paper could be saved annually.

This is very much in line with Carrefour’s desire to stop catalogues getting lost when they are anonymously distributed – far too many of them go straight to the bin. We’re going to prevent them this wastage by gradually extending this scheme across the whole of France said Elodie Perthuisot, the Carrefour Group’s Executive Director of E-Commerce, Data and Digital Transformation.

According to the ADEME (France’s environment and energy management agency), 42% of consumers see paper catalogues as a form of waste. Carrefour had already gone some way towards preventing this wastage by using paper from sustainably-managed forests (recycled seven times on average) for its catalogues. The aim now is to go even further by preventing the needless use of paper. Eventually, computerising its catalogues this way should save tens of thousands of tonnes of paper annually.

*88% of customers who shop at the Lille hypermarket have opted to receive their catalogue electronically. 67% have done so in Soyaux, and 50% in the two other Market stores.