Marks & Spencer and two of its long-term suppliers, will start the development of M&S’ first ‘eco-factories’, pioneering innovative methods of sustainable manufacturing. One factory in Sri Lanka will make lingerie and two factories in North Wales will manufacture furniture upholstery.

The factories aim to be carbon neutral, use renewable energy and send no waste to landfill. Their different  features will include a ‘green roof’ made from vegetation, the ability to harvest rainwater, compressed rice straw boards for partitioned walls and the use of sun to light production areas.

The announcement was made today as part of the first update on Plan A,  M&S’ £200m ‘eco-plan’ which was launched in January and sets a number of targets for the company, including becoming carbon neutral and sending no waste to landfill within five years.

Stuart Rose, Chief Executive, Marks & Spencer said:

“We’re already making progress on our 100 ‘Plan A’ goals, but we’ve a long way to go before we meet the ambitious targets we’ve set. This is a business-wide plan, which means we’re fundamentally changing the way we operate, and not just cherry picking individual initiatives.  We will trial a different approach to manufacturing in our first ‘eco-factories’, just as we’re already trialling new ways of building and operating our stores, to reduce their energy emissions and their waste.”

M&S is also announcing today the following ‘eco-sales’:

• We have sold £1.9m Fairtrade cotton products since we extended our range to 70 products during Fairtrade Fortnight in early 2007. We are the biggest retailer of Fairtrade cotton products on the high street.
  
• In 2006/7 we sold over £22m of Fairtrade food products, compared with £4m for 2005/6.  We converted whole food ranges to Fairtrade such as tea, coffee and sugar in all jams and marmalades.
  
• In 2006/7, total sales of M&S organic food were £100m, up 47% on the previous year.
   

M&S is also announcing the following new Plan A initiatives:

• A trial in Northern Ireland to encourage customers to use fewer carrier bags. Throughout June we will offer free newly-designed ‘Bags for Life’, illustrated by David Downton, with each food transaction. For the month of July we will charge 5p for each for our standard food carrier bags. All money raised will be donated to charity Groundwork Northern Ireland.
  
• A campaign with Save the Children to raise money to enable 20,000 children in western Uganda to go to school. With our customers' support we aim to raise at least £500,000 by donating 5% of the sale price of our main Back to School products during the peak month of August. This money will pay for the construction of over 120 new classrooms and up to 20 new washrooms; provide a safe water supply for six of Uganda's poorest schools and train teachers in 30 schools.

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.

• The three eco-factories being announced today are being developed by long-standing M&S suppliers. The lingerie factory in Sri Lanka, a new development, will be run by MAS Intimates and will open early next year.  The furniture upholstery sites in North Wales, both existing factories, will be run by Westbridge and have committed to become carbon neutral by 2010 and send no waste to landfill. The sites will also maximise the use of sustainable materials such as Fairtrade and organic cotton, recycled polyester fibre fillings, castor oil-based foam and Forest Stewardship Council approved timber.   M&S will provide MAS and Westbridge with advice on sustainable construction, based on our experience gained in our “eco stores”, as well as a contribution to architects’ design costs or sponsorship of key building elements.
  
• We have started to convert our Bournemouth store into our first ‘green store’, incorporating a range of ‘eco-features’. Powered by renewable electricity, on completion, the store will use up to 25% less energy than an average M&S store and emit up to 90% less CO2  than it previously did.  Work has also started on a new store in Pollock, Glasgow which will use up to 55% less energy and emit up to 70% less CO2 than an average M&S store. Contractors started work on-site on the Bournemouth store 15 weeks ago and at Pollock seven weeks ago.

• We have secured 100 GWh of renewable electricity from npower to supply our wholly-owned 130 Simply Food stores in England and Wales, head offices in London and our Bournemouth store. We have also secured 75 GWh of renewable energy to power all of our Scottish stores. These deals will reduce our CO2 emissions by 55,000 tonnes a year.
  
• As part of the Climate Group’s ‘We’re in This Together’ campaign, we have launched a new label and campaign  to encourage customers to help reduce their impact on the environment by lowering their washing temperature to 30°C - saving around 40% energy per wash. The annual carbon savings of customers doing this is an estimated 850,000 tonnes. The label is being introduced on 70% of our machine washable clothing from July. 
  
• An air freight label has been introduced to M&S food products imported to the UK by air. We are currently rolling this out and by the end of the year the label will appear on up to 150 different airfreighted product lines.
  
• Our first electric truck will be used for food deliveries to our Covent Garden store in London from June. The zero emission  truck can be recharged at M&S depots and stores.  We are also trialling a new aerodynamic ‘teardrop’-shaped truck which has the potential to be up to 15% more fuel efficient than existing vehicles in our fleet and has 10% more load space.
  
• In March, we launched an employee campaign to improve energy efficiency in our stores. In its first week, our stores reported energy savings of up to 22% with stores in Portsmouth, Scarborough, Liverpool, Bath and Tolworth and Whitley Bay Simply Foods among those achieving the greatest savings.
  
• We signed a unique five-year partnership with BRE, the leading research and consultancy group for sustainability, in April. BRE is providing advice on the M&S refurbishment programme to ensure it is as sustainable as possible and will develop a set of ‘Sustainable Retail Construction’ guidelines for new and existing M&S stores.  The guidelines will help the analysis of initial store designs, selection of construction materials, and will support key suppliers to deliver sustainable construction methods.
  
• We have planted more than 30,000 trees at the College Valley Estate near Wooler, Northumberland to offset carbon emissions generated by M&S home furniture deliveries. One tree has been planted for every 12 furniture deliveries made.  The College Valley Estate site, alongside another scheme in the Buccleuch Woodlands in Scotland, will offset carbon emissions produced by furniture deliveries from M&S Home for the next four years.
  
• We have worked closely with our asparagus suppliers to double the growing season in the UK. We estimate this will save up to 360 tonnes CO2 per season by not flying in our asparagus.  We are the only major retailer to be 100% UK asparagus during the season.
  
• We have also initiated five other research and development projects to extend the UK growing season and reduce the need for imports:
  o Melons and apricots
  o Organic apples
  o Watercress
  o Mange tout and sugar snap peas
  o Potatoes

2. Waste:  stop sending waste to landfill from our UK stores, offices and warehouses; reduce our use of packaging by 25% and carrier bags by 33%; find new ways to recycle and reuse the materials we use.

Carrier bags

• We launched a campaign to encourage customers to use fewer carrier bags and, instead buy a ‘Bag for Life’. In March we reduced the cost of this bag from 15p to 10p. Sales have since gone up by 68%. We will replace these bags free of charge when they are worn out.
  
• We have changed the majority of our carrier bags to include recycled materials, reducing the amount of virgin plastic we use by 2,000 tonnes each year. All clothing  and home carrier bags are now made from 100% recycled post consumer waste.  By the end of June all standard food carrier bags will contain 20% recycled content.
  
• Also see Northern Ireland carrier bag trial – page 2.

Packaging

• We have begun to print simple symbols on our food packaging, to make it easy for customers to recycle or compost waste. The Government approved WRAP symbols indicating the source of the packaging and how to dispose of it currently appear on 670 prepared food products (12% of our food lines). We will extend this to the vast majority of our food lines by the end of the year.
  
• We have become the first major retailer to commit to sending plastic waste from our stores to the UK’s first plant for PET plastic recycling.  The plant, located in Dagenham, is due to open in December 2007 and will provide us with approximately 6,000 tonnes of additional recycled plastic to use every year.
  
• We are trialling Closed Loop recycling – where M&S packaging can be recycled back into M&S product packaging – in five of our London in-store Café Revive coffee shops with a view to rolling this out across our chain.
  
• We are either reducing or changing the packaging on a number of our food products for example:
  o We have replaced Styrofoam trays for apples with paper pulp trays which can be recycled or composted. We are looking at ways to extend this to peaches, nectarines and pears;
  o We have unwrapped a range of produce such as swede. We’re also running a trial to remove trays from a number of products e.g. mange tout; sugar snaps; extra fine beans;
  o We are trialling new packaging for our Nutritionally Balanced ready meals which reduces the packaging by 31% and the use of plastic by 75%;
  o We have launched the first plastic milk bottle using recycled material.  Following a trial involving 60,000 recycled milk bottles, all M&S organic milk bottles now include 10% recycled high density polyethylene (HDPE).
  

Recycling

• Around 75% of all construction waste from our store development programme  is now being sent for recycling.
  
• In April, we launched a campaign to remind customers they can recycle M&S hangers in store. The total number of hangers sent for recycling in April was 9.9 million, an increase of 52% on the previous year.
  
• We have switched all the paper we use in our stores and head offices (175 million sheets) to 80% recycled paper, saving 1,240 tonnes of CO2 per annum by reducing the amount of electricity required to produce the previous type of paper used.
  

3. Raw materials: ensure our key raw materials come from the most sustainable sources available to us.

• We have extended our organic food to 300 products - 100% more than this time last year. Organic now accounts for sales of around £100m, up 47% on last year. New product areas include organic fruit and veg boxes, nut-free kids’ Easter eggs, fish, meat, cheese, chilled soups, pies, bakery products, wines and champagne as well as Organic Food to Go, the most complete organic lunchtime offer on the high street.
  
• Following the trial of employee uniform fleeces made from recycled bottles at our Edgware Road store, we are extending our use of this material even further. From Autumn, we will sell a range of men’s and women’s fleeces made from recycled polyester. We will also start selling recycled polyester men’s trousers in 10 stores from June. Instead of oil, we are using 11 plastic bottles to create each fleece and 14 plastic bottles for each pair of trousers.
  
• We recently launched a range of men’s organic linen products including linen casual shirts for summer and organic cotton bedding. In autumn we will introduce a range of organic wool knitwear.
  
• For the second year running, the Marine Conservation Society named M&S joint top retailer for sustainable fish in its annual league table.
  
• In May we announced we would prohibit a further 10 pesticides worldwide by April 2008 as part of our industry leading position on pesticide reduction.  This is in addition to the 60 pesticides banned by M&S in 2002. An additional 9 pesticides will be banned by April 2009, providing suppliers with enough time to find suitable alternatives. The move means that by April 2009 a total of 79 pesticides will have been banned by M&S – by far the most comprehensive pesticide reduction scheme of any UK retailer.
  
• By the end of May we will have converted all our fresh geese and duck to free range. 
  
• All M&S kitchen towel, toilet tissue and cube-boxed facial tissue manufactured after 1 May is now made either from wood pulp certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or will be 100% recycled paper (these products represent 94% of our household tissue product range). 
  
• We have also committed to converting all loose bananas to organic or Fairtrade by early 2008. 
  
• We have been approved as an animal-testing free cosmetics and toiletries retailer under the BUAV’s internationally recognised Humane Cosmetics Standard (HCS). Our entire cosmetics and toiletries product range will soon carry the BUAV’s Bunny Logo. This is due to the implementation of a ban on animal testing on ingredients used in M&S cosmetics and toiletries. This is also an extension of our animal testing ban for finished products. 
  
• In early May we announced new M&S Farm Environment Standards written in partnership with Linking Environment with Farming (LEAF). This is the first integrated set of standards for produce and livestock farmers among major retailers.
  

4. Fair partner: improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our supply chain and our local communities.

• We became the biggest retailer of Fairtrade cotton on the high street as we increased our offer to nearly 70 different items during Fairtrade Fortnight. Sales of Fairtrade cotton have since totalled £1.9m. We aim to convert almost 20 million garments to Fairtrade cotton by the end of the year. Our total usage of Fairtrade cotton currently accounts for around one third of the world’s supply and now represents 10% of all M&S cotton.
  
• In 2006/7 we sold over £22m of Fairtrade food products, compared with £4m for 2005/6.  In 2006/7 we converted whole food ranges to Fairtrade such as tea, coffee and sugar in all jams and marmalades.
  Later this week we will launch our Supplier Exchange initiative and supporting website to our 2,500 suppliers. The aim is to drive innovation and best practice on environmental and ethical standards across our supply chain.
  
• During April we appointed a Plan A Champion in each of our stores  and offices to support the delivery of Plan A  for our customers and colleagues.
  
• We have begun to extend our standards in Foods by publishing a grower handbook and setting mandatory labour standards for UK growers.
  
• Also see Save the Children campaign – page 2.

5. Health: helping thousands of customers and employees choose a healthier lifestyle.

• Between January and May we appointed 1,500 Healthy Eating Advisors into our stores who have been trained using dedicated training materials developed by The British Nutrition Foundation, on healthy eating, nutrition and labelling to enable them to assist customers with diet and nutrition queries about M&S foods.  
  
• We continue to reduce salt levels in our food. We remain the only major retailer to have already met the Food Standards Agency’s 2010 targets for breakfast cereals, ready meals, bread sandwiches, cooking and pasta sauces, baked beans, cakes and fruit pies, three years ahead of deadline. 
  
• We have introduced Food Standards Agency Traffic Lights and Guideline Daily Allowance (GDA) labelling on the front of pack of food products including ready meals. We are extending this across all recommended Food Standards Agency categories.

• We will have removed artificial colours and flavourings from 99% of all our foods by the end of 2007 including all chilled foods, cakes, biscuits and bakery. By June all our foods will be 100% free from Aspartame.  Within this initiative, we have banned additives particularly associated with concerns about food intolerance and children’s diets including artificial colours such as Ponceau 4R, Sunset Yellow, Carmosine and Quinoline Yellow which are used in cakes and bakery.

ENDS

For further information, go to www.marksandspencer.com/plana

For further information for media, please call:

Olivia Ross  Marks & Spencer  0208 718 1618/ 07795 968 641
Clair Foster  Marks & Spencer  0208 718 8323 / 07748 147851
Clare Wilkes  Marks & Spencer  0208 718 8642 / 07831 829891

Back to press releases index

Back to top