Marks & Spencer

As one of the UK’s biggest retailers, Marks and Spencer’s (M&S) carbon footprint is a large one: the combined result of operations, suppliers’ activities and the CO₂ that’s emitted whenever customers shop with and use the company’s products in their homes.

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

M&S 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 ‘We’re in This 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.

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