 Background
Tesco is one of the top three retailers in the world, with over 440,000 members of staff serving 30 million customers every week. We operate in 12 countries outside the UK, offering food, non-food and retailing services.
We believe that retailers can play a positive role in tackling climate change and want to lead the way by dramatically reducing our own carbon footprint. We are embedding a sustainable, low carbon approach throughout our business and want to set a good example by ensuring that all our new buildings emit, on average, 50% less CO2e than a store built in 2006.
How the issue was tackled
To achieve this we are focusing on research, investment and communications. Our programme is personally sponsored by Sir Terry Leahy and is considered a priority throughout the business.
Last September we launched our Sustainable Consumption Institute at Manchester University, a £25m investment to examine ways to overcome the barriers which prevent people going green. We will make its findings freely and publicly available, and are also using them to inform our own thinking.
We have invested significantly in green technologies, establishing a £100m Sustainable Technology Fund to support low-carbon technologies that are not yet fully economically viable, in the hope that we can make them so.
We have opened four environmental stores at Diss, Swansea, Wick and Shrewsbury, setting new standards for construction and testing green technology solutions.
Initiatives and building solutions have since been rolled out into new store builds, fit-outs and refurbishments, helping us develop a New Environmental Store Format, a standard blueprint for all new stores.
The support of our people is key to our success in reducing our carbon footprint. We have sought to inform our staff and win their hearts and minds in a number of ways. Our staff awareness campaigns include an energy training video produced with the Carbon Trust and a climate change roadshow which toured the country giving presentations to store managers.
All our UK Metro, Superstores and Extras now have an Energy Champion. Energy Champions are trained to offer the crucial link with staff by identifying simple, positive steps we can all take to save energy. They are supported by posters, stickers and videos encouraging behaviour change, such as switching off lights and turning off taps.
We ran a ‘Go Green’ event in January to raise awareness in our offices of the small steps we can all take to be greener.
Benefits and impacts
The problem of climate change cannot be solved over night. We have started this journey and are pleased to have made significant progress on the road to reducing our impacts. For example, we have now halved energy use in our UK stores since 2000 (per square foot), and in the past year our £86 million investment in energy saving and low carbon technologies has resulted in a saving of 66,000 tonnes of CO2e in stores alone.
Our ‘Go Green’ Office Event was received extremely positively by staff, with staff recycling 60% more paper in January 2008 than in January 2007 – the highest tonnage since the scheme began.
Advice to others
- It helps to raise the profile of a project, both internally and externally, if it has support from the highest levels of your business.
- Tackling climate change can seem daunting, but many small actions can make a huge difference, for example ensuring that everyone recycles where possible.
- Ensure projects reach all levels of your business by communicating effectively with staff.
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