Climate change
The earth is getting warmer, mainly due to an increase in greenhouse gases produced by human activity, with many damaging consequences. It’s a global problem but one we’re already addressing.
Carbon neutral
In 2007 we made the commitment to have carbon neutral operations by 2012. Since then, the UK government have published new guidelines which prevent us from counting renewable electricity towards this goal. We’ve developed revised plans which include the use of carbon reductions outside of our own operations.
Carbon labels
We have contributed to the development of the Carbon Trust’s standard for measuring the carbon footprint of products (PAS 2050). We do not believe that Carbon Labels would be helpful to our customers and have no plans to introduce them in this form.
Bio-diesel
Since we originally announced our Plan A commitment to use more bio-diesel, a number of stakeholders have raised concerns about some of the environmental issues associated with growing crops to replace fuel. We’ve decided to stop using bio-diesel until sustainable sources of supply are available.
Greenhouse Gas Reporting
We report our Greenhouse gas emissions annually using the UK government and international guidelines.
Working with suppliers
We are developing programmes to encourage our suppliers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. For our largest General Merchandise suppliers we have targets to implement three key energy savings measures and a ‘model’ eco-dyehouse initiative.
We’re working with our food suppliers on a Gold/ Silver / Bronze Sustainability Framework and developing a Sustainable Agriculture Programme with our farmers and growers.
Back to top