Twenty-two months into Plan A, Marks & Spencer today presents its regular half-yearly update on the five year ‘eco-plan’. So far 20 of the plan’s 100 commitments have been completed and a further 75 are underway.
Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks & Spencer said:
“We continue to make solid progress and although Plan A is less than two years old it is already becoming ingrained into the way we do business. Conditions may be challenging on the high street but Plan A has made us think of new ways of working. This has helped to deliver not only benefits to the environment and people across our supply chain but also savings to our customers and our business. Progress made on energy saving, reducing waste and increasing efficiency mean that twenty-two months in, Plan A is cost neutral. We know our customers expect us to take a lead on ethical and environmental issues and we will continue to deliver.”
Recent Plan A highlights and achievements include:
• Food Carrier bag usage is down by 80% since we started charging 5p for bags in our food halls. This has saved over 100 million carrier bags from landfill and helped to raise over £500,000 for 22 Groundwork environmental charity projects across the UK.
• Fairtrade cotton sales are up 105% to £27.4m so far this year, with over 4.2 million garments sold across womenswear, menswear, lingerie, kidswear and homeware product ranges.
• The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange has helped to raise £1million for Oxfam and reduced the amount of clothing sent to landfill by around 1000 tonnes.
• Our ‘Wash at 30’ campaign has helped to increase the number of our UK customers washing at 30 degrees from 23%, when the campaign started in April 2007, to 38% in September of this year, saving over 50,000 tonnes of CO2.
• M&S was recognised at the RSPCA Good Business Awards for the third year running, winning three awards including ‘Supermarket of the Year’ and the fashion award ‘Best Large Retailer.’
Launched in January 2007, 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.
o We have launched a new energy service selling gas and electricity to our customers in partnership with Scottish and Southern Energy, incentivising customers to use less energy by offering a £15 M&S voucher to anyone reducing their annual energy usage by 10%.
o One year after opening, many of the features used in our three ‘green’ stores have become standard in all of our new and refurbished stores. The three stores reflect the diversity of our retail portfolio, including a new retail development (Pollok), a new Simply Food (Galashiels) and an existing high street store (Bournemouth). 60% of the innovations used on these sites now feature widely across M&S stores including: energy efficient lighting, displacement ventilation, and a number of water saving initiatives including self closing taps and dual flush toilets.
o Our new Shanghai store also has an emphasis on sustainable design. The store has been built with sustainable features such as energy efficient lighting, environmentally friendly double glazed wall panelling to reduce heat transfer from outdoor to indoor and water saving toilets.
o The first two ‘eco’-factories in our supply chain, opened in Sri Lanka in April 2008, are already delivering significant carbon and energy savings:
- One of the factories, owned and operated by MAS producing lingerie exclusively for M&S, is a new-build and designed to become carbon neutral.
- The other factory, owned and operated by Brandix producing casual clothing, was converted to reduce carbon emissions by 75%, energy use by 40% and water use by nearly 60%. It is the first factory in the world to receive LEED platinum status - the top-level certification for energy efficiency and overall environmental impact awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council.
o The third ‘eco’ factory in our supply chain – and the first in the UK - has opened in Wales. It took our furniture supplier, Westbridge, one year to convert the factory in Holywell. Six months after opening, the site emits 48% less CO2 emissions, has an electrical energy saving of 56% and a water consumption reduction of nearly 30%.
o We are sharing the learnings from Wales and Sri Lanka with our other suppliers and we are progressing well with plans to support the opening of further eco-factories in other countries.
o We continue to encourage farmers and suppliers, both within our supply base and outside, to help build capacity to generate renewable energy. To date we have contracted over 40 gWh of electricity from renewable sources including wind, anaerobic digestion and small scale hydro.
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.
o As well as recycling over 70 million coat hangers so far this year we are cutting the number of different types of hangers used in our supply chain which will help us to increase the amount we re-use.
o We're making steady progress on reducing food packaging, 90% of which is now recyclable, depending on the local authority facilities available. Some examples are included below:
- We’ve successfully reduced the packaging used across all pizza ranges by 62%. That adds up to a saving of over 480 tonnes of packaging a year.
- We’ve replaced the plastic container our beef joint used to be packaged in with a ‘skin pack’ which keeps the meat at its optimum quality but cuts down the packaging by 69%.
- We’ve reduced packaging on our vegetables ranges by 16% by removing the plastic trays they sit in.
o We are on track to increase the percentage of our construction waste which is recycled from 75% to 85% this year.
o We have an ongoing partnership with Closed Loop, a recycling company which makes food and drink packaging from plastic bottles, and have an agreement to take 30% of their recycled food grade packaging for our products.
o Carrier bag usage in our foodhalls is down 80% since we became the first major high-street retailer to roll out a national carrier bag charging programme. All profits* raised from the 5p charge for single use food carrier bags is donated to the environmental charity, Groundwork, to support ‘greener living spaces’ projects to improve neighbourhoods across the UK. Over £500,000 has been raised to date and 22 projects are either complete or underway, ranging from creating a new play area at the Gorgie City Farm, Edinburgh to the development of a new community roof garden in Hammersmith, London.
o The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange has raised over £1 million for the charity in its first six months. The biggest programme of its kind, the Clothes Exchange encourages M&S customers to recycle their unwanted M&S clothing at Oxfam stores by offering them a free £5 discount voucher to spend on clothing, home or beauty in M&S. The Exchange has already helped to reduce the amount of clothing sent to landfill by over 1,000 tonnes.
3. Raw materials: aiming to ensure our key raw materials come from the most sustainable sources available to us.
o Over the last six months sales of organic cotton, wool and linen garments have risen by 114%, with over 600 000 garments sold.
o We have used over 25 million recycled waste plastic bottles to make polyester, which is used in our homeware and bedding as well as in polyester garments and re-usable shopping bags.
o We’re running trials on recycling the 15% of fabric wasted as off cuts during clothing manufacture for re-use in regenerated cotton yarn.
o We’ve worked closely with our suppliers to assess the environmental impact of the materials we use to build and fit out our stores. This insight allowed us to develop a Sustainable Construction Manual with the Building Research Establishment which has been distributed to all our design and construction contractors.
o We were recognised for the third year running in the RSPCA Good Business Awards for our strong animal welfare ethic across food, fashion and cosmetics, and received the following awards:
• We regained the ‘Supermarket of the Year title’ and were praised for our strong animal welfare auditing.
• We won the coveted ‘Best Large Retailer’ award for animal friendly fashion policies.
• We also won the Cosmetics award for ‘Ongoing Commitment to Change’. This recognised the work we have done with our supply base to ensure that the individual ingredients used in our beauty range are not tested on animals.
o Pushing ahead on animal welfare, we are working to change our fresh outdoor bred pork range to free range and are trialling these products in 53 stores.
o As part of our ongoing focus on water reduction we have introduced a range of water saving features in our new and refurbished stores, including percussion taps, use of rain water and waterless urinals. We are also trialling improved automatic forms of metering in 20 stores.
o We have a clear plan in place to reduce the amount of palm oil used in our products and replace it with suitable alternatives. We have identified all the products that we sell containing palm oil and have already begun the process to move to certified sustainable palm oil. We have also helped to fund the WWF Heart of Borneo project which aims to restore and conserve forest land in Borneo affected by palm oil and logging activities.
4. Fair partner: aiming to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our supply chain and our local communities.
o We remain the biggest retailer of Fairtrade certified cotton and in the first six months of this year Fairtrade cotton sales rose 105% to £27.4m. Over 4.2 million garments have been sold across womenswear, menswear, lingerie, kidswear and homeware product ranges.
o We have run a number of UK and worldwide Supplier Conferences on ethical trading. During these workshops we can discuss any issues openly with suppliers to share best practice and find solutions to common ethical problems.
o We have had over 8,000 hits on our Plan A Supplier Exchange Website which is used by over 1500 suppliers in 30 countries. This is a central source of information, outlining business tools, best practice and support for M&S suppliers.
o We are making good progress on the Ethical Model Factories we are developing as part of our commitment to ethical sourcing. Work on three garment factories in Bangladesh is well underway and a further three factories will be developed in other countries over the next six months. The focus of the work is to create long-term improvements in labour standards and establish the level of a living wage. Once the Ethical Model Factories have operated successfully for one year, a best practice country guide will be developed for all M&S suppliers.
o As part of our commitment to supporting British suppliers, this year we launched a nationwide ‘Meet the Farmer’ programme, which allows our customers to meet the farmers who grow the food for their local store. This allows customers to learn more about farming in their area and also acts as a showcase for high quality British produce.
o We have become the first retailer to provide our dairy farmers with funding to help meet the requirements of the potential new Nitrogen Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) legislation, designed to reduce the impact of dairy farming by-products on the environment. As part of our Milk Pledge we pay one of the highest prices of any major food retailer to our dairy farmers – around 28.6p per litre.
o This year, for the second time, M&S sponsored the Sir Ian Botham ‘Great British Walk Against Childhood Leukaemia’. The walk took place in October and visited nine towns in the UK, starting outside the M&S store in each location. Stores devised their own fund raising activities and raised around £25,000 which has been matched by the company to total a donation of over £50,000. M&S provided lunch every day and sportswear for Sir Ian and his team. Since 1985 Sir Ian has walked 8,000 miles and raised approximately £12 million for charity.
5. Health: aiming to help thousands of customers and employees choose a healthier lifestyle.
o Over 750 products in prepared food now feature both the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) nutritional traffic light and Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) front of pack labels.
o We were the first UK retailer to remove hydrogenated fats from our foods, and are looking to reduce saturated fat and sugar levels wherever possible.
o We continue to make progress in our commitment to reduce salt in our products and now meet over 65% of the FSA’s salt targets for 2010. These include categories that are recognised as contributing a large percentage of salt in the diet such as soups, ready meals, bread, sandwiches, breakfast cereals and quiche.
o We have launched four online training modules for staff to help them learn more about healthy eating and nutrition.
o We have completed the removal of artificial colours and flavourings from our entire food and soft drinks range.
Ends
For media enquiries, please call:
Joanna Keohane Marks & Spencer 0208 718 1618/ 07827 858 655
Clare Wilkes Marks & Spencer 0208 718 8642 / 07831 829 891
Notes to Editors
* All of the 1.85p profit from the sale of single use food carrier bags will be donated to Groundwork.
Further details on Plan A progress is available in the M&S ‘How We Do Business’ report, our fifth annual report on social, environmental and ethical performance.
For further information, go to www.marksandspencer.com/plana
For images, please go to www.mandslibrary.co.uk
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