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Marks and Spencer Group plc Annual report and financial statements 2010 Directors’ report 38
How we do business
Plan A continued
Waste
We’re reducing waste and recycling
wherever possible and have committed to
send no operational or construction waste
to landfill by 2012. We’re pleased to be able
to report good progress.
By the end of 2009/10 we’d achieved
an 88% recycling rate and reduced the total
amount of waste we generate in our
operations by 16%. Food waste has been
reduced by 29% with over a quarter of
what is left being sent to generate energy.
We collected 133 million clothes hangers
in-store and reused 76% with the remainder
being recycled. We also recycled 89% of
our construction waste up from 65% in
2006/07.
We’ve continued to reduce packaging –
General Merchandise packaging by 36%
and Food by 20% – whilst also using more
sustainable materials such as recycled
plastics. We encourage recycling and waste
reduction in the communities we work in
and this year, we are signing deals with four
local authorities, including Somerset Waste
Partnership, which will help us to close our
packaging ‘loop’. These deals will bring us
two clear benefits – we will receive more
recycled materials to use in our food
packaging and we will ensure that the
equivalent amount of food packaging we
use every year is recycled.
Through the M&S and Oxfam Clothes
Exchange, some 500,000 customers have
raised £700,000 for Oxfam by returning
1.8 million used M&S garments. The success
of our work with Oxfam led to the expansion
of the scheme last summer to encourage
people to recycle their soft furnishings,
including cushions, curtains, throws and
bed linen.
A further £1.4m has been raised for
Groundwork thanks to donations for our
Food carrier bag charging, with their use
down by 81% since 2006/07. The money
raised is being used to fund 79 parks and
play areas, including our 125th anniversary
town centre project in Leeds.
We have stretched our waste targets
even further and by 2015 our aim is to
increase the number of M&S garments
recycled annually by Oxfam from 2 million
to 20 million and increase the percentage
of hangers we recycle to 70%. We will also
work with our suppliers to improve their
performance on waste and we aim to
source 25% of our food (by turnover) from
factories that send no waste to landfill
within the next five years.
Natural resources
We want to ensure our key raw materials
come from the most sustainable sources
possible, so we protect the environment and
the world’s natural resources. We have
already done much work in this area,
including becoming the first major UK food
retailer to source only pole or line caught
tuna for all the tuna products we sell, from
sandwiches to steaks, and we also became
the first retailer to sign the WWF’s Seafood
Charter to ensure our entire range of
seafood products comes from sustainable
sources. Over 60% of our wild seafood is
now either Marine Stewardship Council
(MSC) certified or undergoing MSC
assessment.
In October 2009 we purchased GreenPalm
certificates to cover all the palm oil used in
M&S products and committed to use only
sustainable palm oil by 2015, with the first
eight ‘sustainable palm oil’ products launched
in March this year. We also improved our
sourcing of wood materials so that 72% of
TRUST & QUALITY
Left: From farm to fork Paul Luney is one of our
food technologists, specialising in fish. As part of his
role he regularly visits our suppliers to ensure they
adhere to our industry leading code of practice. He
is pictured here on a visit to a sea farm in Oban on
the west coast of Scotland.
TRUST
Above: Model factories In our Brandix Seeduwa
factory in Sri Lanka workers enjoy a subsidised
canteen and store, medical facilities, an on site
counseller and free financial advice.
Our Birstall store in Yorkshire has become the
first M&S store in the UK to send none of its
waste to landfill. All the waste from the store –
which is one of our biggest Simply Foods – is
now segregated and returned in our lorries for
recycling.
PLAN A RECYCLING ALL OUR WASTE
For more information visit
marksandspencer.com/plana