Interview international supermarket news: Marks & Spencer Director of Plan A and sustainable business, about the eco-friendly cause

Today the online version of International Supermarket News (ISN) published an interview with Richard Gillies - Marks & Spencer Director of Plan A and Sustainable Business, about their eco-friendly cause.

Since January 2007, Marks and Spencer has had an environmental and ethical vision to share that has been a major contribution to the supermarket industry's part in fighting for the eco-friendly cause: Plan A. The name suggests top priority, focus, urgency, even passion, and the refusal to settle for a Plan B. This is an initiative that, as well as involving staff across the chain, has embraced everything from landfill to sustainability, to animal welfare. In the name of environmental concern, M&S has worked alongside organisations such as WRAP, Oxfam and The Woodland Trust to reduce waste and to encourage a less corrosive approach to the planet. M&S' Director of Plan A and Sustainable Business Richard Gillies has given ISN an exclusive and detailed insight into how the project has worked from its conception to its ongoing practice, which has just reached its half-way point in fulfilling the ambition of obliterating landfill waste by 2012.

For the rest of this interview we refer to the interview on International Supermarket News.

The collaboration of French retail giant Carrefour and WWF

Some years ago already the French retail multinational Carrefour implemented a plan to save the world´s forest resources. For this plan they started to work together with the NGO organization (WWF – World Wildlife Fund). The plan included to select FSC certified wood and introducing this range of garden furniture made of roble wood. At the moment all the countries were Carrefour is present, they have this range of sustainable forest.

The plan of sustainable forest Management, includes information of suppliers in order to guarantee the traceability of the wood and demonstrate the origen and sustainability of the wood products. The objective is to offer a full range of 100% FSC certified wood products in the assortment of all the international hypermarkets.

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Coca Coca In the Netherlands focuses on a healthy, active life style and a sustainable environment.

Soft drink manufacturer Coca Cola in The Netherlands revealed their social responsability plan, key points are a healthy and active life style and a sustainable environment. By focusing on sustainability they hope to achieve better company results and for the society. Coca Cola is thinking about reducing water and energy use and the re-use of packages.

This means that they have the objective to recycle 85% of the bottles and cans. The bottles have already been changed, they have less weigth, reducing the amount of garbage. In The Netherlands the big bottles incluye some deposit to recycle these bottles. For the smaller bottles and cans this does not exist (yet), they are working on a new recycling system for these smaller bottles. This new recycle concept “Recycling Kit” is now being tested. The sales of these smaller amounts happen a lot in Shopping areas and at service stations, therfor when the test works out well, they will roll-out this recycling point concept into further areas.

Coca Cola, based in Dronten the South of The Netherlands, obtains sustainable water from their own mineral water source (current 87% of the total). The objetive is to be water neutral before 2020, therefor they need to re-use water.
At the website of Coca Cola you can find the commitments of Coca Cola with the environment.
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/environment.html

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Jos de Vries The Retail Company launches at LinkedIn the Group Innovative Retail Concepts

Jos de Vries The Retail Company started the group "Innovative Retail Concepts" at www.linkedin.com for retail professionals to share knowledge and follow the latest trends on innovative (green) retail concepts.

We invite you to join this group and follow the news and to have discussions with other retail professionals.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2120501

Regards,

Maurice van der Kooij

How to find the right balance in creating the green store concept

Green buildings may be good for the environment but they also need to take into account shopping value and the comfort of the shopper. Removing all the air-conditioning could well reduce the quality of fresh produce and lead to overheated customers leaving the store.

How to find the right balance in creating the green store concept is an interesting article of the magazine Elsevier Food International, written by Noella Pio Kivlehan.

Click here for the rest of this article.

Climate neutral, biological tomatoes at Dutch supermarket chain Dekamarkt

The supermarkets of Dekamarkt are the first ones in The Netherlands selling biological tomatoes. Dekamarkt is analyzing the assortment, composing a responsable assortment. The tomatoes are cultivated climate neutral because the total process of cultivation is followed.

Because of the use of a lot of artificial manure rivers in Southern America have a lot of water plants in the rivers. These are removed and put on the side of the river, this causes a high level of emissions. Now this biological garbage will be used as compost. The transformation of this compost results into “carbon credits”, these are used to compensate the emission of production, storage and transport of these tomatoes.

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Green supermarket gets energy from their clients

In the Sainsbury´s supermarket of Gloucester they have a novelty in green retailing. The clients generate energy for the supermarket, driving over a kinetical plate installed at the parking, the supermarket will receive energy. The movements are caught and transformed into energy, which the supermarket uses in different applications.

This supermarket already works with sun and wind energy. With this new application the supermarket thinks to save 30kW energy per hour, comparable with the energy consumption of all cooling and freezers in the supermarket.

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