Marks & Spencer has started to use food waste to power some of its stores. The renewable electricity is being provided through an anaerobic digester in Shropshire, which is taking household food waste and converting it into electricity. The site is the first of two anaerobic digesters to supply M&S. The other anaerobic digester will be located on a farm by Spring 2008 and will be fuelled by cow slurry and agricultural crops. Together, they will produce enough renewable electricity to power six M&S Simply Food stores.
M&S is also announcing today that it is extending its carrier bag charging trial to a further 33 stores in the South West of England following a successful 16 week period of charging 5p for food bags in its Northern Ireland stores, which has seen a reduction in customer use of carrier bags by 66%.
These announcements form part of M&S’ detailed update on Plan A. Launched in January, Plan A sets-out M&S’ 100 ‘eco-targets’ for the next five years, including aiming to become carbon neutral and send no waste to landfill.
Stuart Rose, Chief Executive, Marks & Spencer said:
“Plan A is driving change and innovation right across M&S. For example, we are now the first major retailer to use food waste to power some of our stores. Customers are also seeing more and more changes, including our new ‘eco’ stores, increased Fairtrade cotton ranges and more organic foods. We’re extending our carrier bag charging trial to over 30 stores. If this continues to encourage customers to use fewer bags, we expect to roll this out much further. We know there is still much to do and have complicated issues to tackle, but we are continuing to make strong progress.”
We are also announcing today the following ‘eco-sales’ (to 29 Oct 2007):
Fairtrade cotton sales are continuing to grow, currently at £15m for 07/08 across womenswear, menswear, lingerie, kidswear and homewear product ranges. Fairtrade food and drink sales are also up 22% to £56m.
Organic food sales are up 43% to £81m across 489 different product lines.
Eat Well food sales are up 7% with sales of £802m across 1,200 lines.
We are also introducing special Plan A products or services for customers this Christmas, including:
All fresh whole turkeys, geese and duck will be free-range
Limited edition Christmas food products across Food to Go ranges with donations from sales going to Shelter
‘Greener’ home products including composters and energy saving kettles
A real tree planted in Scottish woodland for every artificial Christmas tree we sell (1)
Over 30m Christmas cards made from cardboard using Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood. Charity Christmas card donations will go to Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Save the Children and Shelter
M&S has joined the Woodland Trust and Recycle Now Christmas card recycling scheme to provide customers with recycling facilities for their Christmas cards. Throughout January customers will be able to bring their Christmas cards to M&S stores(2) for recycling and money raised through the scheme will go to Woodland Trust tree planting projects.
The 100-point Plan A includes five-year targets in five areas. Progress to date includes:
1. Climate change: aiming to make our operations in UK and Republic of Ireland carbon neutral, only using offsetting as a last resort, and helping customers and suppliers to reduce their emissions too.
We opened our first three ‘eco-stores’ in October. The stores feature energy efficient lighting, air conditioning and fridges; eco-friendly building materials and are powered by ‘green’ energy. The stores will emit up to 95% less CO2 than other M&S stores and use up to 55% less energy. They are located in:
- Bournemouth: the remodel of an existing 70-year old store
- Pollok: a brand-new store at Silverburn Retail Park
- Galashiels: a brand-new Simply Food store
Also in October we unveiled our first wind turbine. The farm-based 75m turbine is located in Aberdeenshire and will produce approximately 2,300mwh of electricity each year - enough to power the new M&S ‘eco-store’ in Pollok. Electricity usage across existing stores has also reduced by 6% this year, working towards the 25% reduction we aim to achieve by 2012.
Good progress is being made on our suppliers’ ‘eco-factories’. The first newly built lingerie factory, based in Sri Lanka, is on-track to open in Spring 2008. The factory will be powered by renewable energy and will feature FSC certified wood, earth bricks and rainwater harvesting technology.
Our first range of ‘greener’ home products launched in September. The range includes an ‘Eco-Kettle’ which uses up to 30% less energy than a conventional model; energy saver plugs; recycling bins; composters and wormeries.
We are now the only company in the world to use a revolutionary, new articulated trailer for our lorries, whose teardrop shape reduces CO2 emissions by 20%, when compared to a standard cab-trailer fleet operation. M&S has ordered 140 of the trailers, all of which will be in operation by Spring 2008 and can carry up to 16% more load than a standard trailer. The trucks’ aerodynamic shape also delivers a 10% fuel saving. The teardrop trailer will reduce M&S’ CO2 emissions by 840 tonnes every year. (3)
In June we announced our support for the Women’s Institute’s Carbon Challenge – a campaign to encourage WI members and M&S customers to reduce their carbon footprints. The WI is encouraging its members and the public to reduce their carbon emissions by 20% over the course of the next year. Participants can measure their carbon footprint using a version of the WWF ‘Footprint Calculator’, available on www.nfwi.co.uk and www.marksandspencer.com/plana
2. Waste: aiming to stop sending waste to landfill from our UK stores, offices and warehouses; reduce our use of non-glass packaging by 25% and carrier bags by 33%; find new ways to recycle and reuse the materials we use.
Carrier bags
Following on from the success of the food carrier bag charging trial in 15 M&S stores in Northern Ireland, M&S is extending the trial to a further 33 stores in the South West of England.
The trial in Northern Ireland has led to a 66% reduction in the number of bags used, with three quarters of M&S customers now using an alternative to the standard food carrier bag each time they shop. It has also raised over £40,000 for environmental regeneration projects managed by Groundwork Northern Ireland.
For three weeks from 13 January, M&S stores in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall will receive a free M&S Bag for Life with each food transaction. From 3 February M&S will introduce a 5p charge for standard food carrier bags in these stores. All profits from the sales will go to Groundwork UK.
If this extension is successful M&S will look to introduce charging to the rest of its stores by the end of next year.
Bag for Life sales are also up across all M&S stores by 400% and food carrier bag usage in-store is down 12% with 31m fewer bags used between April – October.
Packaging
Almost 70% of our packaging is now recyclable across the majority of Local Authorities. A further 20% could also be recycled if there was a more consistent approach to recycling across the UK. We’re working with Local Authorities to help address this.
We are participating in a project with Tetra Pak and Local Authorities to increase recycling facilities of Tetra Pak. As a result, the number of Local Authorities now able to recycle Tetra Pak juice containers has increased from 20% in April to 70% in September. We’re currently looking for similar projects to get involved with.
Nearly 70% of M&S food packaging now carries the Waste & Resource Action Programme (WRAP) symbols. These back-of-pack symbols provide customers with clear information on disposal advice, such as whether it can be recycled. We are also informing customers on packaging that isn’t currently recyclable because, for example, Local Authorities do not yet have the available facilities. We aim to have the WRAP symbols on all (4) M&S food packaging by the end of 2007.
Clothing hangers
We sent 70 million hangers for recycling between April and October, 34% more than the same period last year. This includes an extra 69,000 hangers that were returned by customers to 11 of our stores during our successful coat hanger amnesty trial held over three days in September.
3. Raw materials: aiming to ensure our key raw materials come from the most sustainable sources available to us.
We launched a range of fleeces made from recycled polyester for men, women and children in September. On average, each fleece is made using oil from 11 plastic bottles. Other products introduced using recycled polyester includes ranges of school uniform trousers and skirts, and men’s and women’s trousers.
We also now sell the first range of organic wool on the high street in our women’s knitwear. Other organic clothing products introduced in the last six months include ranges of:
- Menswear: slogan t-shirts, rugby shirts and v-neck jumpers
- Womenswear: shirts, dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers
- Kidswear: t-shirts, pyjamas, knitted v-neck and zip-up jumpers
We recently became the first major retailer to commit to stop selling imported white veal and calve’s liver due to welfare concerns. From January 2008, M&S will only sell UK-reared rosé veal which meets high animal welfare standards, backed by Compassion in World Farming and the RSPCA.
For the second year running, M&S was named best large fashion retailer in the RSPCA Good Business Awards. We also won the runner-up prize in the supermarket category for our continued commitment to improve animal welfare and the progressive company prize in the cosmetics category.
We successfully converted all our fresh duck to free range in May. All fresh whole turkeys and geese will be free-range this Christmas.
We were named as the joint top retailer in the Greenpeace league table for using sustainable sources in tissue ranges.
4. Fair partner: aiming to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our supply chain and our local communities.
We continued to build on our position as the biggest retailer of Fairtrade certified cotton by extending our range of Fairtrade t-shirts made with Fairtrade cotton in September. We bought the largest consignment ever of Fairtrade cotton - 4,800 tonnes - to make 12 million women’s t-shirts. The cotton is from four African countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal). Our total usage of Fairtrade cotton now represents 10% of all M&S cotton.
To help monitor labour standards in factories more closely we are currently doubling the resources in our international sourcing offices. These employees will work alongside the factories we source from to ensure our ethical standards are being met and work quickly to address issues if they arise.
Following the uncertainty many British farmers faced due to Foot and Mouth, we announced a series of measures to increase support for UK lamb farmers through our ‘Lamb Pledge’. This includes guaranteeing a market-leading price for the entire UK season, extending the lamb season in-store and increasing the number of British lamb products on sale. The Pledge has been designed to help stimulate further demand for British lamb and offer its dedicated producers financial security against market and seasonal price fluctuations. It has been modelled on the M&S Milk Pledge which was launched in 2005 and saw M&S become the first major retailer to offer dairy farmers a fixed price for milk.
We donated 5% of the purchase price from school uniforms bought by customers between August and September to a Save the Children education project in Uganda. The final donation was £645,000 and will pay for more than 50 new classrooms and desks, chairs and textbooks. It will also finance training and housing for teachers and enable over 15,000 children in Western Uganda to go to school.
For the sixth successive year M&S supported Breast Cancer Awareness month in October. This year M&S produced a special range of pink themed products in support of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, with 10% from the sale of these, plus many others, going to the charity.
For the third year running M&S is supporting Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity in the run-up to Christmas. On 7th November M&S will launch a range of limited edition Christmas food products across its food to go, deli and dessert ranges and will make a donation to Shelter for each product sold. Over the last three years the appeal has already raised more than £1million for Shelter – enough money to help 10,000 families. This year M&S is urging customers to support the appeal and increase the total to £1.5 million.
5. Health: aiming to help thousands of customers and employees choose a healthier lifestyle.
We have removed all artificial colours from our children’s food – a move which has been fully endorsed by the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group. By June we had also removed Aspartame from all our foods and are on track to remove all artificial colours and flavourings from 99% of all the food we sell by the end of 2007.
All M&S fresh salmon is now Omega 3 rich ‘Loch Muir’ salmon.
We were the first retailer to announce in September we had significantly cut levels of saturated fat in some foods. Products included sandwiches, ready meals, crisps and savoury snacks – everyday foods that can make significant contributions to saturated fat levels in people’s diets. On average, M&S crisps and savoury snacks now contain 70% less saturated fat than two years ago and sandwiches 30% less. The move involves over 500 products and follows M&S’ groundbreaking achievement in removing hydrogenated fat from all its foods in 2006.
In January we will introduce 40 new Eat Well for Kids lines, helping parents ensure their children can eat a complete nutritionally balanced and healthy diet. The new products are in addition to the 25 existing lines in the range, which includes snacks and ready meals.
ENDS
For further information, go to www.marksandspencer.com/plana
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For further information for media, please call:
Olivia Ross Marks & Spencer 0208 718 1618
1 Every artificial Christmas tree over 3ft.
2 Excluding Simply Food stores, including those in BP stations, and M&S stores in Republic of Ireland.
3 Compared with 2006.
4 Excluding food products where packaging is too small to carry symbols.