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Morrisons original campaign ‘Switching On to Switching Off’ trained over 110,000 colleagues in energy awareness, saving over 24,734 tonnes of carbon emissions and £3.28 million in energy costs. This was followed by ‘Cut the Carbon’ linking energy use to Global Warming.
Background
Morrisons believe in ‘Taking Good Care’ of our planet. Their environmental strategy focuses on climate change, waste reduction and sustainability.
In 2008, they were named as one of the first companies to be awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for action taken to cut carbon emissions leading to genuine and ongoing, effective reduction.
In 2009, they were able to announce that they had made a cumulative reduction of their emissions of over 36% based on 2006 emissions (this equates to over 591,322 tonnes of carbon emissions).
How the issue was tackled
They’ve reduced their carbon footprint across stores, offices, produce packing, meat processing, bakery facilities and transport. Their reduction strategy includes:
- Energy efficient and low emission technologies
- Carbon and energy monitoring, management and control
- Sourcing and generating renewable energy
- Transport efficiency
- Colleague awareness and ‘good housekeeping’ policies
- Numerous energy and carbon saving projects
The ‘Cut the Carbon’ campaign is one element of their strategy, and highlighted here.
In 2006, they introduced a ‘Switching On to Switching Off’ training programme to engage colleagues with the task of reducing their carbon footprint.
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Energy Champion |
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Building on the success of their initial programme, they introduced their ‘Cut the Carbon’ campaign to enable colleagues to further understand what constitutes a Carbon Footprint, and how they can help in the workplace to combat climate change.
They established ‘Energy Champions’ across the business, to cascade information and training to colleagues, as well as monitor performance at every location. As awareness grew, their ‘Energy Champions’ became ‘Carbon Champions’. Newsletters are produced advising the Carbon Champions on Morrisons successes, and give tips to reduce their carbon footprint through daily operations.
Benefits and impacts
Morrisons carbon reduction training has now reached over 124,000 colleagues providing detailed information on energy awareness including: lighting, refrigeration, cooking, equipment, waste, water and transport.
- By the end of 2008, over 85% of their stores were saving energy
- The training helped them meet their Carbon Footprint reduction target one year early
- The training programme has been extended to all locations
- They have achieved a 6% reduction in Group energy through the initiative alone
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Morrisons Kidderminster store became the first UK supermarket to achieve an 'excellent' BREEAM rating for its environmental performance | |
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Through their training, key areas of improvement were identified in stores and measures were implemented to improve store energy use for example:
- Combined Heat and Power (CHP): A system generating both electricity and heat to help power refrigeration equipment
- Lighting: New sales floor lighting saving 71.8 tonnes of carbon per year, per store
- Their colleagues have benefited from the energy training and receive regular updates on their performance.
Advice to others
We [Morrisons] believe that a carbon reduction strategy has to reach all parts of the business and therefore all of your people. Standardised training has helped to galvanise our activity, created new ideas, opportunities, feedback, support and has been instrumental to our achievements to date.
Having created awareness, one key issue going forward is how to continue that momentum. A ‘campaign’ enables you to refresh the programme and build year on year. So for example, in 2009 we will create a ‘best practice’ training DVD for all ‘Carbon Champions’ demonstrating best practice.
Our campaign is understood as being a tangible expression of our values in action, and therefore part of business, something we can all take responsibility for in our everyday activity.
"I think that there is a lot more that we can do if the UK is going to get a low carbon economy, we are looking at how to engage more with our customers and communities, because on this issue, we must all work together."
Paul Boreham, Group Energy Manager, Morrisons Supermarkets.
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