Tesco achieves Carbon Trust Standard
Greenwise Staff
8th June 2009
Supermarket giant Tesco has secured the Carbon Trust Standard, which provides independent recognition of a company’s efforts to reduce its carbon emissions year on year.
The accreditation comes as the supermarket has unveiled plans to build the world’s first zero-carbon store in the UK and news that it will trial electric car charging points in some of its stores.
The Carbon Trust awards its standard only once a company has been independently verified by third-party assessors and been able to demonstrate it has genuinely reduced its carbon footprint and is committed to making further reductions year on year.
Tesco achieved a reduction of 0.7 per cent in absolute footprint – measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent – between 2006/07 and 2007/08.
The Carbon Trust Standard also recognise ‘carbon intensity’, a measurement that takes into account “environmentally efficient business growth”. On this measurement, Tesco achieved a reduction of 12.5 per cent in emissions per unit net sales area and 15.1 per cent in emissions per unit turnover.
However, although over the last year Tesco’s carbon intensity fell by 10.9 per cent year on year, in real terms, the retailer’s carbon footprint actually rose by 3.7 per cent in line with its ‘net sales area’, which grew by 16.4 per cent.
Tesco executive director, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, described the Carbon Trust Standard accreditation as “incredibly important” because it confirmed, independently, the supermarket was delivering on its plans to fight climate change while growing the business.
Tesco will build its first zero-carbon store in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire. The wood-framed store will be powered by an on-site combined heat and power plant that will sell surplus energy back to the National Grid.
The retailer is looking into trialling electric car-charging points at stores in Kensington and Vauxhall in London and if successful will look to roll out charging points more widely.
The company announced last month that it had managed to cut waste heading for landfill to zero in a further 800 of its 2,300 stores in the UK. It brings the total number of Tesco stores diverting 100 per cent of their waste to landfill to 1,700.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Tesco opened Cheetham Hill store in Manchester with a 70 per cent lower carbon footprint than an equivalent store in 2006 would have had.
Tesco has set targets to halve its carbon emissions against a baseline of 2006 on new stores and existing buildings by 2020 and on distribution emissions of each case of goods delivered by 2012.
“Tesco’s commitment to cutting our carbon footprint – among other key environmental targets – is central to our business strategy. I’m delighted that Tesco and the many people here who work on climate change have received this recognition,” said Neville-Rolfe.
Tesco published its 2009 Corporate Responsibility Report at the end of last month.