Protecting Forests
Find out about our approach to protecting forests
Forests constitute the world’s largest and most important ecosystems, and contain the largest reservoir of plants and animals on land. Rainforests store the most carbon by area, are of most value to disadvantaged communities, and contain greater biodiversity than almost any other type of forest. Yet these are the forests mankind is depleting most rapidly year on year, as the result of illegal or badly managed logging and land conversion for agriculture, including the cultivation of soy, palm oil and cattle.
The demand for timber is expected to triple by 2050, which will make it increasingly difficult to obtain. Wood is an essential commodity for M&S. It provides the base material for many of our products - most notably furniture, but also many others, including tissues, hairbrushes and greeting cards. We couldn’t package our products, even run our business, without wood materials, so we appreciate the vital importance of forests and timber plantations.
M&S recognises commodity agriculture as a major contributor to forest loss, with an estimated 50% of tropical forest loss being associated with palm oil, soy and wood-pulp plantation development and cattle ranching. However, these commodities can also play a valuable role in promoting sustainable livelihoods, agricultural productivity and good land management, so we do not believe prohibiting their use is the best way to address deforestation. We aim to exclude deforestation from our own supply chains while working with others to promote good land management and sustainable production practices at a landscape level.
Commitments and targets
We’re committed to engage in worldwide efforts to eliminate deforestation from global supply chains in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity and ensure the rights of communities to maintain traditional lifestyles.
We want all of our palm oil, soy, cattle, wood and wood-derived materials to come from the most sustainable sources, so we’ve committed to remove commodity-driven deforestation from our supply chains by 2020 and ensure that the fabrics we use in clothes and home products don’t come from ancient and endangered forests. We actively support restoration and conservation solutions for these natural resources.
Approach
We’ve made major investments in programmes to tackle deforestation and promote sustainable forestry.
Our supply chain is complex. We don’t own farms or factories and don’t purchase ingredients and commodities directly. Most of our ingredients and commodities are sourced in a global market. In some supply chains it’s possible to engage directly with growers - for example, our furniture manufacturer operates near to both forest and saw mill. But in other supply chains, particularly those that are more complicated (for example, paper products that are made from lots of different species) or in the case of commodities that we use in relatively small quantities (for example, palm oil) our ability to control and influence is more limited.
We can’t achieve zero deforestation worldwide alone. Even if all our wood is sourced sustainably and we do remove commodity-driven deforestation from M&S supply chains, it will only impact on a limited area of forest and a small percentage of global trade. We need the entire global market to be transformed, which is why deforestation is one of six priority issues on which we’re leading with others to accelerate sector-wide systemic change.
Supply chain interventions, market insights, technical expertise and funding all play a role in the transformation we seek.
Our approach to protecting forests focuses on:
Progressively sourcing all the timber and wood fibre used in our products and operations from the most sustainable sources and ensuring that the impact of fabric sourcing on forests is understood and addressed
Establishing clear minimum standards on solid wood and wood-fibre
Together with forestry, sustainability, and industry experts, we’ve developed a clear policy to ensure wood is consistently sourced across our business. This policy applies to all aspects of our business use of wood which is within our sphere of influence. We have adopted a collaborative approach to sourcing wood fibre used in textiles (see below). We believe this scope to be industry leading and hope that other companies will follow and extend their policy ambition beyond wood used in products. Find out more about our wood policy.
Our highest priority is to ensure that through our sourcing:
- Wood is legally harvested
- Forests with High Conservation Values (HCV) are protected
- Plantations from natural woodland are avoided
- The traditional and civil rights of people and communities are upheld
All our suppliers are required to comply with our Global Sourcing Principles and acknowledge the right of indigenous people and rural communities to give or withhold their Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) before new logging rights are allocated or plantations are developed. We recognise the unique social and environmental value of Intact Forest Landscapes and support activities designed to protect and enhance these areas.
In 2019, 89% of the wood-based materials we used were Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, recycled or from sources assessed as otherwise protecting forests and communities. The majority of our wood-fibre is FSC certified. This is our preferred certification scheme. We will purchase non-certified wood if we have sufficient evidence that forests and communities are protected (or that the risk of this is low). We also encourage the use of wood from secondary sources (reclaimed, reused or recycled).
Our policy reflects the many different ways that we use wood. For example, in construction materials and food packaging it’s ambitious but achievable to demand 100% FSC certification, but when sourcing materials such as clothing tags from India, or Christmas decorations from China, it’s almost impossible to enforce the same requirement. This flexibility doesn’t mean a lowering of standards; it reflects our determination to find deliverable solutions.
Guaranteeing that wood meets our standards isn’t easy. We recruit independent technical experts to carry out our wood policy assessments, and we’ve developed ways of working that ensure the wood we source meets our policy requirements. For example, we’ve developed a simple RED / GREEN rating system for our buyers to use and we also provide them with tailored reports so they understand the causes of failure and can work with their suppliers to achieve M&S standards. We provide a range of training resources such as webinars, guides and run a wood help desk. In sourcing wood, we receive data submissions from more than 300 suppliers, resulting in more 6,000 lines of data and more than 2,000 claim checks. These add time and complexity but we believe they’re absolutely necessary.
We also try to find out more about our supply chains so we can improve our understanding of the root causes of non-compliance.
Compared to others in our industry we’re small-scale procurers, and our influence is limited. We support supply chain partners who commit to improve, but if they consistently fail to meet our requirements we will cease trading with them.
Working collaboratively with stakeholders
For more than 20 years there’s been consistent effort to improve the sustainability of timber sources, with some of the most advanced third party standards and greatest legal safeguards now in place through the EU Timber Regulation and other legality schemes. However, credible forest certification schemes such as FSC, still account for only a small fraction of the market.
We’ve been a member of WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network since 2004. We participate in the FSC solutions group, which comprises major multinational forestry companies, WWF, Greenpeace, and the FSC leadership team. We’re a lead member of the British Retail Consortium’s Timber Working Group and engage with the Tropical Forest Alliance (a public private partnership between the Consumer Goods Forum and the US Government) which is now hosted by the World Economic Forum. We also work closely with the Rainforest Alliance, to understand and address the challenges of sustainable forestry and agriculture, particularly in the tropics.
We’re using our relationships with the FSC, WWF, Rainforest Alliance and other non-profit and standard setting organisations, as an opportunity to work collaboratively with other stakeholders (retailers, processors, growers and others who might otherwise never discuss issues collectively) to argue the case for a more sustainable approach to wood production and harvesting. Working with these organisations doesn’t provide all the answers, but does allow us to to specify and guarantee standards to a certain extent, despite our inability to directly intervene in every supply chain relationship.
Sourcing wood-based fabrics
As the use of forest fibres in fabrics increases, we're working to reduce the impact our sourcing has on forests.
We’re committed to working with industry and civil society partners to spark a shift to more sustainable supply chain practices that ensure protection of the world's remaining ancient and endangered forests and endangered species habitat through our Man-made Cellulosic Fibre Responsible Sourcing Policy.
As a proud partner of the CanopyStyle Initiative, we're committed to:
- End the sourcing from ancient and endangered forests, endangered species habitat and controversial sources
- Support lasting conservation solutions
- Promote the use of next generation alternative feedstocks that have a reduced environmental footprint, such as recycled textiles and agricultural residues from food production
We’re also part of the CanopyStyle Leaders for Forest Conservation Group, providing vision, strategic insights, inspiration and active leadership for our world’s forests.
Identifying, understanding and taking action on commodity-driven deforestation in our supply chains, with a specific focus on palm oil, soy and cattle that comes from a forest risk region
Palm Oil
Palm oil is the leading vegetable oil in terms of production volume and it’s used in many everyday products. Palm oil’s versatility, high yields, and low production costs, have led to deforestation as more land has been converted for its cultivation.
We use palm oil and derivatives in our food, household, home and beauty products, as well as our employee catering facilities. We require our suppliers to disclose their palm oil supply chains and if we consider this disclosure to be insufficient we help them improve it. Through a coalition with other European retailers we’re working with palm oil importers to improve the transparency of sourcing standards for imports used in key European refineries.
We require all our suppliers to buy palm oil certified by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), whenever this is available. We buy GreenPalm certificates for any volumes that aren't certified in order to support the market for more a sustainable product. Find out more about how we're performing against our palm oil policy.
To help improve standards and encourage their implementation, we participate in the Retail Palm Group and Consumer Goods Forum’s Palm Oil Working Group. We lead the European Retailer Traceability Coalition and are a member of and sit on the RSPO Board.
Soy
Soy is a globally traded commodity produced in temperate and tropical regions. It’s a key source of protein and vegetable oils, used mainly to add unique nutritional benefits to animal feed.
Despite industry efforts and some notable success stories, soy still contributes to deforestation in South America, although at a lower rate than previously.
We aim to source soy that doesn’t contribute to deforestation, but tracing this ingredient is difficult as it’s traded on a global market and source farms are difficult to identify. At present, only very limited quantities of certified soy are available.
We’re improving our understanding of the way soy is used in our supply chain and products, while working with the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), the Retail Soy Group, Consumer Goods Forum and the Amazon Soy Moratorium to support market transformation.
We purchase RTRS credits to match the use of soy in feed for M&S Oakham chickens and we support projects that help to protect forests at risk from soy cultivation. For example, we back projects run by Solidaridad (an organisation that works on sustainable raw materials) to help 1,200 small-scale soy growers in Paraguay move to more sustainable agricultural practices.
Cattle Products
The growth in cattle-ranching for beef products and leather is the key cause of deforestation in Latin America, with around 70% of deforestation in Brazil attributed to cattle. Cattle are commonly part of a cycle of land use change associated with agricultural expansion. The region of greatest deforestation associated with cattle rearing is the Amazon biome - therefore we class regions and countries that border the Amazon at risk of deforestation.
We source beef and leather products to sell to customers and use beef products in our employee catering facilities. Our goal is to end sourcing of products that contribute to deforestation.
The volumes of Brazilian beef and leather used by M&S and the numbers of products that depend on them are much are much smaller than palm oil or soy. As a result, our activity in these spheres reflects this lower brand risk and leverage. Additionally, local and international efforts in beef and cattle are less developed than in palm oil and soy, so there are fewer programmes for us and our suppliers to participate in and support.
We promote integrated approaches to cattle and soy related deforestation in Brazil through our participation in the Consumer Goods Forum and the Tropical Forest Alliance.
Our approach to addressing deforestation risks associated with cattle products is summarised below:
| Beef | All our beef is sourced from the UK and Republic of Ireland (ROI). |
| Leather | We ask all leather product suppliers to annually disclose the country of slaughter of all our leather. This allows us to understand our sourcing footprint and to verify our policies are being followed. We require suppliers to exclude leather from cattle reared in the Amazon biome from our supply chains. If leather is being sourced from deforestation risk regions, then the supplier must either:
OR
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Supporting market transformation through collaboration with industry partners and other stakeholders
Leading with others to accelerate change
We can’t achieve zero deforestation worldwide alone, so we’re working with others. These include the Consumer Goods Forum, which comprises many of the world’s leading food manufacturers and retailers. We’re also working with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the Round Table Responsible Soy, and the Leather Working Group, as part of our efforts to remove commodity-driven deforestation from all supply chains.
We also have systems in place to comply with the EU Timber Regulation that prohibits placing illegally harvested timber and timber products on the European market.
We take into account four guiding principles in our approach to this issue:
- Stewardship – promoting the value of independent certification standards and verification, alongside a clear aspiration to move to more sustainable landscape level management
- Transparency – to encourage a high level of transparency within our supply chains and as a component of land management policy
- Resource Efficiency – to encourage continual improvement in productivity and resource management within agriculture and through the supply chain to reduce our reliance on virgin materials
- Innovation – to promote innovative practices and a greater understanding of the opportunities offered by developing a more circular economy
We report annually about our performance improving the sustainability of wood and forest commodities in our Plan A Report. As a member of WWF's Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) we publish an annual status of our current supply chain for various categories of forest goods.
We also submit data annually for the four forest risk commodities that make a biggest yearly impact on deforestation (timber products, palm oil, soy and cattle products) to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s forest programme and share our progress towards sustainable sourcing through our Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) annual reports. We’re proud to have been rated as a sector leader for general retailing in the CDP Forest Programme every year since it was launched in 2009.
Working with others
Listening, learning, responding and working in partnership is an important part of how we do business.
We’re collaborating with many partners to help protect the world’s forests. We’re working with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Rainforest Alliance, Greenpeace and WWF, to improve our own standards and argue the case for a more sustainable approach sustainable forestry and wood sourcing. We’re partnering with Strategic Environmental Consulting to improve our assessment and reporting approach. And we’re working with Canopy, to improve the sustainable sourcing of wood-based fabrics.
Through the Consumer Goods Forum we’re engaging in global efforts to tackle deforestation, and we’re collaborating with the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), and the Leather Working Group, in support of our goal to remove commodity-driven deforestation.
