Respect for the Environment

We are committed to taking steps to control and minimise any damage our operations may cause to the environment through manufacturing processes, transport and logistics, energy usage and packaging. In particular we are aware of the issue of Climate Change and so we want to understand and minimise our carbon emissions.

Our aims

• To ensure operational compliance with all relevant environmental legislation.
• To have fuel efficiency measures in our stores and within our distribution network.
• To have energy efficiency measures in our sites to reduce lighting usage and energy consumption and to consider alternative sources of power.
• To minimise waste disposal, recycle whenever practicable, and look for alternative materials.
• To raise staff awareness of the issues by training and co-operation with our suppliers and partners.

Our Progress 08/09

• Waste management - we are compliant with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment in working partnerships with our approved contractors.
• Fuel Efficiency - We have reduced the distance our products are carried to reduce pollution and road congestion. Our store delivery schedule is reviewed weekly in order to minimise distance travelled by the fleet, whilst still ensuring excellent customer service. Additionally, all drivers of our delivery vehicles have undergone fuel efficiency training.
• Management controls at store level have reduced overnight consumption from 8.3% of overall consumption in 2007, to 7.8% in 2008. We will continue to monitor and improve upon these figures to ensure a continual downward trend.
• Work has been undertaken to benchmark both electricity and gas consumption across the estate. Based upon electricity consumption data for years preceding 2008 it has been established each store requires 10kWh’s per square foot to trade, whilst the figures for gas have benchmarked consumption at 8kWh’s per square foot.
• Electricity data suggests that the upgrade of lighting systems within stores reached the 15% reduction in consumption. Figures for stores that received the upgrade have demonstrated a 15.89% saving in usage which has reduced our CO2 emissions by over 2, 1000 tonnes.
  • We have installed the new energy efficient lighting scheme in all new stores.
  • Appointment of a water consultancy to review all aspects of water management has produced a variety of consumption and cost savings at a number of sites, and currently completing further investigative surveys at a further 35 high usage sites.
  • Waste management has continued to pressurise the volume of waste going to landfill and increase the volume of recycled materials.

The following graphs show the improvements made year on year :

In addition, we now manufacture our own card board tubes at Harris House substantially reducing the environmental impact of having pre-fabricated tubes supplied to Harris House from an external supplier, we are also returning from our stores all tubes and plastic waste, which has helped achieve the improvements shown in the last two graphs.

Road miles

The number of road miles travelled by our DHL partner delivery fleet has substantially reduced as a result both of consolidating our operation into Harris House, removing the previous requirement to trunk all deliveries to Huntingdon, and using routing software to ensure road miles are minimised whilst still meeting the businesses needs.

The two graphs below demonstrate these savings. The first graph shows the fuel saving by not using Huntingdon. The second shows savings in fuel used in delivering to shops 07/08 v 08/09 the consequence of better routing and not running half empty vehicles, whilst increasing the number of stores.

Our targets 09/10

• To evaluate energy saving schemes and implements the most promising to reduce gas consumption.
• Our company car policy will be reviewed to ensure more environmentally friendly choices of vehicle are available.
• To further our investigation to install Automatic Meter Read (AMR) meters across the estate to further improve electricity consumption data quality which will allow us to target problematic sites and to establish the efficiencies of energy saving projects.
• To benchmark water consumption against which targets can be set for future years.
• To investigate and benchmark consumption figures for the European division of the business.
• Trial new recycling ideas at store levels for materials which are currently sent to landfill.