LONDON, 2015-1-7 — /EPR Retail News/ — Sainsbury’s Q3 CSR update: Continued progress against our 20×20 Sustainability Plan across all five values
- Celebrated 20 years of partnership with The Royal British Legion and ran our biggest ever campaign in support of the Poppy Appeal
- Reformulated our own-brand lemonade and cola to save 1,310 tonnes of sugar annually from our customers’ baskets equating to 5.2 billion calories
- First major supermarket to launch Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified cod on our in-store café menu
- Launched seasonal customer recycling programmes, including Poppy and Pumpkin recycling
- The commemorative chocolate bar featured in our ‘Christmas is for Sharing’ TV advert, raised an additional £500,000 for The Royal British Legion
Mike Coupe, Chief Executive, said: “This quarter we celebrated our 20th year of partnership with The Royal British Legion by staging our biggest ever campaign in support of the annual Poppy Appeal. We welcomed Legion volunteers into our stores across the country, donated all profits from our poppy-inspired merchandise, and invited our customers to round up their bill at checkout to donate the difference. For the first time we ran a TV advert to tell our customers about the different ways they could support the Poppy Appeal at Sainsbury’s.
“Our partnership with the Legion continued into Christmas, as we unveiled our “Christmas is for Sharing” TV advert and a commemorative chocolate bar. We were delighted with the response from our customers, who helped us to raise an additional £500,000 from sales of the bar to support the Legion’s work.
“This quarter also saw an exciting addition to another one of our long-term campaigns – Active Kids – as we announced the appointment of Liverpool striker, Daniel Sturridge as our new ambassador. Alongside Paralympians Ellie Simmonds and Jonnie Peacock, Daniel will support our work to encourage young people to enjoy healthy lifestyles and get into sport.
“All of these are examples of our long-term commitment to causes that are important to our customers and demonstrate how our values make us different.”
Other hightlights from the quarter include
1. Best for food and health
- Reformulation: We have reformulated our own-brand High Juice squash range to reduce the sugar content, which will remove 946 tonnes of sugar per year. In our own-brand carbonated drinks we have removed a further 1,310 tonnes of sugar per year from our lemonade and cola. Combined these two initiatives remove 8.9 billion calories per year from our customers’ baskets
- Colleague health: In 2014 we trialled and then established a ‘Health MOT’; an innovative health check that gives our colleagues a personalised health score taking into account health metrics such as Body Mass Index, blood pressure, body fat and hydration levels. In 2014, 84,000 colleagues were offered the opportunity to participate as part of the full store and depot roll out
- Lighter alcohol: In October we relaunched our Taste the Difference Conegliano Proseccowith the alcohol by volume (ABV) reduced from 11 per cent to 10.5 per cent, which will remove over 1 million units per annum from our customers’ baskets
- Allergens: As part of our commitment to raising awareness of the needs of customers with allergies and intolerances, we continued our sponsorship of the Allergy Show in Liverpool in October. Attracting 24 per cent more visitors than the previous year, we supported a Cook Zone where we sampled bespoke freefrom recipes to inspire our customers with allergies to Live Well For Less
2. Sourcing with integrity
- Research and Development: Projects ranging from hen welfare to fruit packaging have been awarded support and expertise to collect and process data. The collection of data will help build more efficient, resilient and secure agriculture supply chains and provide us all with insights and information to help develop successful products, services and innovative farming practices
- Technical Management Academy: We carried out our first pilot training course on Agency Labour and Prevention of Worker Exploitation. The two-day certified programme was delivered by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and focused on assisting our suppliers in tackling hidden labour exploitation. It was attended by 12 delegates from across the supply base including meat, fish and fresh produce suppliers
- Farmer and Grower Groups: Our annual farming conference in December brought together over 650 farmers from our Agricultural Development Groups to share knowledge and inspire innovation, where we announced our investment in the future of British farming through our new scholars programme
- Sustainable seafood: We are the first major supermarket to launch Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified cod on our in-store café menu. As the leading retailer for sustainable seafood, this adds to our range of 150 products that carry the MSC logo and have been sourced from sustainable fisheries
3. Respect for our environment
- Energy efficiency: Our award winning work to reduce our stores energy consumptioncontinues with 70,000 Light Emitting Diodes (LED) installed to date, saving 40 million kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the annual energy usage of over 4,300 homes. As the clocks went back, our LED promotion for customers provided great value bulbs to help to reduce customers’ energy usage in the home
- Seasonal recycling: We continued our work to help our customers recycle more, including a pumpkin recycling trial at 10 stores, allowing customers to send their pumpkins to anaerobic digestion following Halloween. Our poppy recycling programme, now in its second year, saw commemorative poppies returned to store to be reused. Finally, in conjunction with 10 water companies we distributed 130,000 fat traps in advance of Christmas, designed to help customers dispose of left over cooking fat without pouring it down the drain
4. Making a positive difference to our community
- The Royal British Legion: We celebrated 20 years of partnership with The Royal British Legion and ran our biggest ever campaign of support for the Poppy Appeal. Our Christmas advert this year was made in partnership with the Legion and featured a commemorative chocolate bar, which we sold in-store with all profits going to the charity. We made one million bars of chocolate, raising £500,000 for the Legion
- Active childhoods: England and Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge was announced as our new ambassador to support campaigns including Active Kids, alongside Paralympians Ellie Simmonds and Jonnie Peacock. Daniel is already proving to be a great role model for young people, through his commitment to sport and his passion for healthy eating
- Christmas charity engagement: Our stores welcomed their Local Charity partners into store for some festive fundraising, as well as inviting local groups to take part in a weekend of carol singing on 13 and 14 December
- Food donation: We worked with our supplier, Faccenda, to donate nearly 10,000 turkeys to FareShare in time for Christmas. In partnership with our fresh produce suppliers we also expect to grow our fruit and vegetable donations to 400 tonnes next year, as we continue to help FareShare tackle food poverty in the UK
5. A great place to work
- Seasonal jobs: We employed over 10,700 temporary colleagues over the Christmas and New Year period to help serve our customers at the busiest time of year, giving many people valuable experience and a stepping stone into the workplace
- Carers rights: We celebrated another year sponsoring Carers Rights Day and a group of our Diversity Champions attended a reception at the House of Commons to mark the achievements of Carers UK
- Serving our stores and customers: Over 2,200 of our store support centre colleagues based in offices in London, Manchester, Coventry and Edinburgh pledged over 3,800 days ofsupport in stores over Christmas. This helped us deliver the best possible service to our customers at this busy time of year as well as providing a connection to our stores for our office colleagues
- Long service: 415 colleagues celebrated their 25 years’ service milestone and 576 colleagues reached 20 years’ service between October and December 2014. This brings the total number of our colleagues to have reached 20 years’ service to over 15,700
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