Twelve months into Plan A we have made good progress in implementing many of the actions we set out, but we still have more to do. Our progress reflects the growing involvement of M&S customers, suppliers and employees in Plan A across the following five pillars.

We've made good progress in tackling climate change across our supply chain, operations and consumers' use of our products. In the last 12 months, we’ve reduced energy related CO2 emissions from our stores and offices by 55,000 tonnes; supported farmers who are investing in small-scale renewable energy production; opened 3 pilot ‘eco-stores’; ordered 140 new aerodynamic trailers; completed a carbon footprint for our food business; and helped shift the percentage of clothing washes done at 30C from 23% to 31%.

We've started to engage our customers in reducing carrier bag usage and recycling clothing. We've also reduced our use of packaging, increased the amount of recycled material we use and improved our recycling rates for construction waste and coat hangers. It’s a good start, but we know we must do even more to achieve our target of sending zero waste to landfill from our own operations.

We've maintained our good progress across a wide range of raw materials. On animal welfare we've led the market in implementing lower stocking densities for chicken and again received the RSPCA Award for animal welfare in fashion. On clothing we’ve introduced more Fairtrade and organic cotton, organic linen and recycled polyester. We’ve also increased sales of organic food by 48%.

We've extended our use of Fairtrade certified products, in particular cotton and developed a Lamb Pledge to support our UK lamb farmers. We’ve created a successful Supplier Exchange to involve our suppliers in Plan A and continued to play a major role in the community raising L1.6m for Breakthrough Breast Cancer and L646,000 for Save the Children. In total our Fairtrade food sales are up 20% this year and we’ve sold 3.2m Fairtrade cotton garments. We’ve also updated our commitments on labour standards to ensure we work even more closely to support our suppliers. For example, by increasing the size of our overseas team of labour standards experts from 7 to 23 and helping our suppliers develop six ethical model factories to identify and share best practice.

We've removed artificial colourings and flavourings from 99% of the food we sell, continued to lead the sector in reducing salt levels in food, introduced front of pack FSA traffic lights and trained 1500 of our employees as healthy eating assistants.

For more details on our progress in each area, click on the relevant pillar on the left hand menu.

Add your Reply :