Sainsbury's works with smaller suppliers to improve the environment

Sainsbury's is keen that all own-brand suppliers should be able to demonstrate comprehensive and meaningful engagement with all the environmental issues that affect their business and is offering its expertise in a trial with a number of smaller suppliers.

In 2001/02 Sainsbury's sent to all suppliers a guide to reducing environmental impacts and also a questionnaire on environmental engagement. The feedback from this showed that own-brand suppliers were very keen to play their part in reducing impact on the environment and would welcome assistance in doing so. This led to a trial project for us to help some of our smaller suppliers improve.

Early in 2003, working with Scottish Food & Drink (Scottish Enterprise) with the "approval" of the Scottish Executive, we invited 27 companies to participate in the "Raising the Standard" programme. We followed this up with a training day in East Kilbride and 6 companies agreed to have their environmental performance reviewed by our environmental management team.

Our team visited each company and discussed what they knew of environmental issues, what they were doing about them and where they felt they needed assistance. We talked to them about energy, waste, packaging, donation, drainage, transport, recycling. In each case we identified with our supplier what were the major issues and what areas we could help with now and in the future.

We think the trial has been very helpful for our suppliers but the proof of the pudding, so to speak lies with the suppliers concerned. For instance, Louise Sandall, Technical Manager of Simply Organic said of the programme:

"As an all-organic company, we are particularly aware of the impact our business has on the environment. We work very hard to minimise our impact on the environment. We were therefore very pleased to work alongside Sainsbury's, by taking part in their Raising the Standard programme. The programme has been valuable to us in many ways - not only has it helped highlight additional environmental improvements and objectives, it has also helped to progress our existing objectives. In addition, the expertise and resources that the programme has provided has been beneficial."