UK tackles sustainability and local sourcing

Sustainability

• Major UK retailer Marks & Spencer says its five-year “Plan A” sustainability drive has become a key initiative for change. By 2012 the company aims to become carbon neutral, send no waste to landfill and extend sustainable sourcing. It will also help improve the lives of people in its supply chain, and help customers and employees live a healthier lifestyle.
• Fast food chain McDonald’s has chosen the UK as one of two worldwide markets where it will implement an environmental score card for use with its supply chains. The scorecard will help suppliers monitor and manage their environmental impacts in air, water, energy and waste.
• In June 2008, the UK’s Carbon Trust launched the world’s first carbon reduction award scheme. The UK Government set up the trust in response to the threat of climate change. The scheme requires organisations to measure, manage and reduce their carbon footprint.
• The Carbon Trust launched its voluntary PAS 2050 carbon labelling scheme in July 2008. Supermarket chain Tesco is already trialling 20 products with the Carbon Trust Carbon Reduction Label.
• In 2007, the 13 major UK grocery retail chains and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) signed the Courtauld Commitment. This is a voluntary deal to reduce packaging waste. It aims to design out packaging waste growth by 2008. It also wants to deliver absolute reductions in packaging waste by March 2010 and to identify ways to tackle the problem of food waste.
• Four UK supermarket chains have committed to phase out battery eggs. The EU’s Laying Hens Directive bans battery cages from 2012.

Local sourcing

• In March 2008, the UK’s fourth-largest food retailer Morrisons announced 100 percent of its meat was now British-sourced.
• In 1998, there was just one farmers’ market in Britain. Ten years later there are 550.
• A consortium of British and Dutch growers has announced it will build a glasshouse development the size of 80 football pitches. The move is in response to UK shoppers’ demands for British-grown salad vegetables all year round. The multi-million pound investment will boost Britain’s salad crop by 15 percent by 2010.
• Tesco says it now has 3000 local product lines. Sales of fresh product, labelled as local, have increased by 20-25 percent.

This article originally appeared as part of ‘Sustainable selling points’, by Nikki Mandow, in Bright magazine on July / August 2008. Issue 29.