Pestle – environmental

M & S make strenuous effects to make the majority of their products fair-trade, sustainable and of course environmentally friendly. Hey produce environmentally friendly textiles dyes for their clothes range as well as offering clothing lines made from fair-trade cotton.

The Plan A initiative was launched a few years ago to increase the environmental sustainability of the business within 5 years ( www.wikipedia.com ) they had 5 main aims to be successful by 2012. These were

·         Become carbon neutral

·         No waste to landfill

·         Extend sustainable sourcing

·         Improve the lives of people in the supply chain

·         Customers and employees live a healthier life cycle

On plan for the Plan A sustainable raw materials for 2012:

Sustainable textiles

·         New ways of producing fibres like cotton, linen and wool.

·         Trialling new fibres to reduce environmental impact of the textiles

Cotton

·         Launching a sustainability strategy covering all their cotton including initiatives such as fair-trade and organic.

M & S are known worldwide for being one of the largest retail users of cotton and so they want to improve its environmental and social standards in its production. They were the first major UK clothing retailer to launch organic wool and linen garments.

On this plan M & S had to achieve man made materials such as making polyester from recycled plastics rather than using oil. This has then since been achieved and they’ve increased the proportion of dyehouses covered by recent environmental and health and safety audits. (http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/products/roadmaps/documents/ms0910-case-study.pdf )

As they now use the recycled polyester on some of their garments from waste bottle customers have responded positively towards this and around 300,000 have been sold from these recycled bottles. (http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/howwedobusiness/our_policies/sustainable_raw_materials/sustainable_processes  )

Since launching the Plan A project in 2007, M & S are setting themselves an ambitious target of becoming the world’s most sustainable retailer by 2015. ( http://www.actionsustainability.com/news/273/MS-extends-Plan-A-sustainable-sourcing-commitments/ )

The brown, reusable bag was introduced to reduce the use of plastic carrier bags and a year later they put a charge of 5p on the plastic bags which at the time customers were not happy, but this was the only way to encourage customers to use reusable bags.

In 1999 M & S developed a set of Global Sourcing Principles which sets out requirements for suppliers to abide by. These include:

·         Working hours and conditions

·         Health and safety

·         Rates of pay

·         Minimum age of employment