Your M&S

As one of the UK’s biggest retailers, our carbon footprint is a large one: the combined result of our operations, our suppliers’ activities and the CO₂ that’s emitted whenever customers shop with us and use our products in their homes.

Climate change is a complex area and we don’t claim to have all the answers. But we do know that we need to act fast. That’s why one of the goals in our eco plan, Plan A, is to make our operations carbon neutral within the next five years.

We aim to do this in a number of different ways, for example:

• Reducing energy use by 25%
• Using green electricity in all our stores
• Trialling new forms of renewable electricity like anaerobic digestion
• Tackling food miles – we’ve started to label the food we import by air with an aeroplane symbol
• Opening eco stores (our first will be in Bournemouth)

We also want to help our customers cut their CO₂ emissions too through campaigns such as Together. We will start by encouraging them to reduce their washing temperatures to 30˚C – saving around 40% energy per wash – and will introduce similar ‘carbon-friendly’ solutions and ideas over the course of the year.

For more information, go to www.marksandspencer.com/plana.