Plan A is our five-year ‘eco plan’ to address some of the key social and environmental challenges facing M&S. We pledged to meet 100 separate Plan A commitments within five years, and so far we have made progress on 94 of the 100 commitments.

By 2012 M&S will:

• become carbon neutral with minimal offsetting;
• send no waste to landfill from our operations;
• extend sustainable sourcing;
• set new standards in ethical trading; and
• help customers and employees live a healthier lifestyle.

We’re committed to Plan A, because it’s the right thing to do. There’s also a powerful business case. Plan A not only gives us distinction in a crowded marketplace, but challenges us to increase efficiencies, and continually seek new and better ways of doing business, so that we can achieve the ambitious targets we have set ourselves.

Climate change

Despite opening more than 100 new stores in 2007/08, we cut our total CO₂ emissions from our stores, offices and warehouses by nearly 50,000 tonnes. We achieved this 9% decrease on last year by switching an additional 21% of our electricity to renewable sources. We also improved our energy efficiency by 4%, and started sourcing electricity from farm-based wind turbines and an anaerobic digestion facility which generates power from food waste.

Because around 60% of our carbon footprint is generated by our suppliers, and a further 30% by our customers, we’ve been looking closely at how we can encourage our suppliers to reduce their CO₂ emissions. For example, we encouraged the development of low carbon supplier factories (see story to right).

Waste

Right across our business, we’ve been finding new ways to ensure that by 2012 we send zero waste to landfill from our own operations. We’ve seen a 6% reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill, as a result of improving the recycling of our construction waste, and collecting 122 million clothing hangers to reuse and recycle – over double the amount collected last year.

In January 2008, we launched the M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange – calling on customers to dig deep into their wardrobes to help fight poverty. Customers taking M&S items to an Oxfam store will help reduce the 1 million tonnes of clothing going to landfill each year, and in doing so will receive a £5 (€7) M&S discount voucher to spend on purchases of £35 (€50) or more.

One of the biggest challenges we face is to reduce our packaging, but without making our products susceptible to damage, or in the case of food, reducing their freshness. In 2007/08 we reduced the weight of packaging around each Easter egg by nearly 20%. At the same time, we’ve increased the amount of our food packaging that is recyclable to 70%.

Sustainable raw materials

During the year we converted all our toilet rolls, kitchen rolls and tissues to either Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified or recycled paper. We also used FSC materials for more than 50% of our range of Christmas greeting cards (over 30 million in total) as well as our publications for customers, including the ‘Your M&S’ magazine. In total 62% of current wood materials used in M&S products are: FSC certified, certified by another independent organisation, or recycled (excluding fabrics).

Fair partner

We use around one third of the world’s Fairtrade cotton. We are working with local communities and organisations around the world, such as the Fairtrade Foundation, to increase the availability of this and other Fairtrade commodity crops such as sugar and tea. Additionally we are extending our Fairtrade ranges of jams.

The Fairtrade premium improves the standard of living in the local communities funding the building of schools, healthcare clinics and transport links.

Health

One of our most significant achievements for the year is our commitment that all food produced after 1 April 2008 is now entirely free of artificial flavours and colouring. Originally, we planned to only do this with our children’s food, but having completed this work by September 2007, we decided to extend it to all foods. We’ve also greatly increased range of Eat Well healthier options, as well as our excellent progress in salt reduction.

Plan A: next steps

We’ve achieved a great deal, and learned even more during our first full year as a Plan A business. But we know that there’s a lot to do if we are to achieve our five-year targets.

Plan A isn’t perfect, and we revisited our ethical trading commitments to make them stronger. We will continue to review our progress and where we need to, change our commitments to meet emerging issues.

In 2008/09 we will develop better, more robust systems for gathering the data we need to evaluate and improve our Plan A performance. We’ll also be working harder than ever to develop partnerships that communicate our messages or help us to find innovative solutions.