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Our environment

Reducing our impact on the environment and promoting good environmental practice


Making the right decision for the long term is one of our founding principles, and environmental sustainability is key to this approach. We have programmes, processes and targets in place to ensure we continue to deliver our environmental commitments.


Commitments

We are committed to looking for absolute changes in CO2e emissions despite the fact that we are a growing business.


Seeing the wood from the trees:

We are corporate supporters of the Prince’s Rainforests Project, set up by HRH The Prince of Wales to highlight the link between rainforests and climate change, and to work with governments, industry and non-profit organisations to fight rainforest destruction. As part of the global awareness campaign, our Chairman Charlie Mayfield has been filmed pledging his support, and many of our individual Partners have signed up too.


27% Like-for-like reduction in Partnership CO2e emissions per £m sales against 2001


The carbon challenge

Climate change is arguably the biggest environmental challenge we face today, with average temperatures rising and extreme weather events increasingly frequent. The UK Government has a long-term target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, and we are committed to developing policies and initiatives to support that goal. The UK’s interim target is to reduce emissions by 34% by 2020; however, this may increase to 40% following discussions at Copenhagen in December this year. We have already made significant cuts in our CO2e (CO2 equivalent) emissions relative to the size of our business. We are now committed to looking for absolute changes in our overall CO2e emissions. We are working through what needs to be done to deliver this commitment and will publish a target in due course. This carbon reduction commitment is supported by a range of initiatives and targets covering direct emissions such as those from company-owned vehicles, fuel combustion and refrigeration, and indirect emissions such as those associated with electricity use and waste management.

Reducing our carbon footprint

As a growing business, total gross emissions increased by less than 1% in 2008/09 to just over half a million tonnes. However, our Partnership-wide carbon management programme has helped to reduce CO2e emissions, on a normalised basis, from 99 tonnes CO2e per £million of sales in 2001 to 73 tonnes. This 27% like-forlike reduction exceeds our previous reduction target of 20% by 2020.

In 2008/09, we conducted a thorough review of the methodology we use to calculate our carbon footprint. This reassessed our reporting boundary (see diagram on page 24) and materiality, as well as the emissions factors we apply, enabling us to align our emissions reporting with current good practice; for example, we now include emissions associated with refrigeration and cooling, and the impacts of our Leckford Farm operations. We will seek to continue to develop our reporting in line with guidance on the reporting of emissions recently published by Defra and DECC.


John Lewis Partnership GHG emissions (CO2e)

Tonnes CO2e Baseline year 2001/02 2007/08 2008/09
Scope 1* 183,015192,751185,947
Scope 2* 199,313255,607264,879
Scope 3* 60,445 54,510 54,431

Total gross emissions 442,773 502,868505,258

*See diagram on page 24 for description of scope boundaries