We are working hard to reduce our environmental footprint in all areas of the business.
The way we build new stores will play a significant role in meeting our commitment to Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions in our own operations by 2035. We’re looking at a whole range of features to make our stores truly sustainable including solar panels, heat pumps, electric vehicle charging, rainwater harvesting and cycle facilities. We’re also reducing electricity use in heating, ventilation, lighting and refrigeration.
We continue to reduce plastic packaging across our own-brand products – by 2025 we’ll have cut this by 50% and all our own brand plastic packaging will be recyclable, reusable or compostable. This year we replaced our plastic ‘bags for life’ with a paper alternative – which will save around 3,200 tonnes of plastic each year.
We’ve also taken huge steps to reduce food waste – for example with our ‘Naturally Wonky’ fruit and vegetables, Too Good to Go ‘Magic Bags’ and our Unsold Food programme which redistributes surplus food to local causes such as food banks.