Tesco Recognized for Climate Change Initiatives
The top ranking comes from a high score in both the Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI), which assesses strategy and action to reduce emissions and in the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index.
Oct 13 2010 --- Tesco has been named as the top retailer in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)’s 2010 UK FTSE 350 report. The report recognises major UK companies for their environmental work including Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Morrisons. Tesco is also ranked fourth overall, following Reckitt Benckiser, RBS and HSBC.
The top ranking comes from a high score in both the Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI), which assesses strategy and action to reduce emissions and in the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI), which assesses the quality and completeness of reporting on carbon management.
The company is also the highest scoring retailer in the CDP’s Global 500 report on the 500 leading companies worldwide, which was published on 20 September.
Tesco’s recent climate change initiatives include opening the world’s first zero carbon supermarket in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, carbon labelling products in the UK and Korea to help customers understand the carbon impact of the products they buy and building one of California’s largest roof-mounted solar installations at our ‘Fresh & Easy’ distribution centre in Riverside.
Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Executive Director at Tesco commented: “Tesco believes retail businesses can play a powerful role in tackling climate change and we have set ourselves ambitious goals to ensure we deliver. We are committed to be a zero carbon business by 2050, and to halving our carbon impact by 2020. We also want to work with our suppliers to green our supply chain and help our customers to switch to low-carbon lives. We are encouraged that the CDP has recognised our efforts, and pleased to be the highest ranked retailer this year.”
Tesco’s approach to climate change is listed as follows:
• We will keep cutting our own emissions as a business and are committed to becoming a genuinely zero-carbon business by 2050 and to halving the emissions from our new and existing buildings by 2020.
• We will work even more closely with our suppliers to reduce the lifecycle emissions of the products that we sell by 30% by 2020.
• We will find ways to help our customers to lead low-carbon lives and halve their personal and domestic carbon footprints by 2020.
Recent Tesco initiatives include:
• We opened the world’s first zero carbon supermarket in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire last year and have environmental stores open in all our retail markets.
• We are on track to meet our 2010/11 carbon targets – we reduced emissions from our baseline portfolio of buildings by 8% in our first quarter, on a like-for-like basis, and achieved a 32% reduction in emissions from new stores and distribution centres compared to 2006/7.
• In the UK alone, we save over £100m a year in energy costs through the energy efficiency improvements we have made since 2000.
• We have written to over 1000 major suppliers to seek their collaboration on our commitment to reduce the emissions of the products we sell by 30% by 2020 and are receiving an encouraging response already.
• We have measured the carbon footprint of 500 products and put carbon labels on 120 in the UK so far (including milk, detergents and light bulbs) to help people make an informed choice about the products that they buy, 30 products have also been labelled in Korea.
• This month, the Tesco Magazine contains a bespoke booklet on greener living for our customers. We have also launched our Home Efficiency Service, through which we sell solar panels to customers. In Thailand, we have launched a ‘Green Bag, Green Point’ campaign to encourage customers to reuse their shopping bags and reduce plastic bag use.
