As a major retailer, M&S acknowledges its role in contributing to the 30 million tonnes of waste generated by UK households, most of which ends up in landfill.
As part of its ‘eco’ plan known as Plan A, M&S has committed to ensuring that none of its clothing or packaging needs to end up as landfill by 2012.
It aims to do this through the following initiatives:
- Ending food waste sent to landfill through setting targets to reduce food waste from its stores over the next 12 months and by preventing the remaining food waste being sent to landfill through using environmentally friendly alternatives such as composting.
- Through a number of measures to reduce its use of packaging and make sure what is used is easy to recycle. By, for example a) cutting its use of non-glass packaging by 25% b) Turning used packaging into new packaging in six of its café outlets over the next year, with the aim of extending the programme to all 450 customer and employee cafés in the UK and Ireland within five years.
- Reducing the 100,000 tonnes of waste created annually in the UK through plastic bags by converting all remaining bags to recycled plastic, and reducing the use of carrier bags by 33% over the next three years.
- Helping customers and suppliers reduce waste through making sure that no M&S clothing needs to be disposed of as waste within five years by researching alternatives to clothing disposal, including donation, composting and recycling.
This example almost didn't make it onto the website, as it is close to simply being a piece of corporate PR.
We have included it as a good example of How to ge a forceforgood company because:
- It is costing Marks & Spencer a significant amount of money (estimated £200m) – this shows there is commitment behind the words
- M&S is cooperating with eight external partners to achieve these goals – becoming a forceforgood generally involves cooperation
- It illustrates how M&S is converting its rhetoric into real actions involving all four stages of moving towards becoming a greener company:
i) reducing – cutting non-glass packaging by 25%
ii) reusing – (???promoting reusable bags???)
iii) recycling – recycling packaging, composting food waste
iv) transforming its business model: researching alternatives to clothing disposal
Links to more information about these waste-related initiatives (and also to Marks & Spencer's wider 'Plan A' can be found
here.