BITC Responsible Business Champion 2020!

We are delighted to announce we have been successfully awarded the accolade of ‘Responsible Business Champion 2020’ as part of Business in the Community’s (BITC’s) annual responsible business award.

Being one of four businesses that have achieved this within the Connected Places category, it recognises our ‘1 Change’ programme and how we are connecting our members together to tackle single-use plastic in our local communities.

What are the BITC’s Responsible Business Awards?

BITC’s Responsible Business Awards recognises pioneering businesses who address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through integrating sustainability across their organisation and a demonstration of commercial success as a result. 

We are proud to have been awarded this title and a huge thank you goes out to our colleagues for your support in enabling us to achieve this. 

Why were we nominated for awards?

The award, in particular, recognises our 1 Change campaign achievements including the following;

• Helping to engage over 1,000 member and community pledges to tackle single-use plastics in the community. 

• Enabling 1,000 eco-bricks to be created to build a Turkey shed made out of waste plastic for our community partner Fairy-tale Farm, by mobilising members, customers, community partners and schools to work together through our Cotswold Regional Community.  Helping to eliminate waste and conserve resources, we are the first UK retailer to offer this innovative solution through eco-bricks, and have developed a community model that can be rolled out into other areas.   

• Helping to rebuild the health of water, land and biodiversity in the community by inviting over 700 volunteers to tidy up 380 bags of litter from the natural environment across our 20 Regional Communities involving schools, members, community partners and colleagues. 

• As a result of our community engagement, we have been able to implement business changes that has resulted in a reduction of 2 tonnes of plastic per year through our operations

• Working with our valued members we have replaced single-use plastic carrier bags with compostable bags in over 100 Food Stores, eliminating over 3 million plastic bags per year. 

That's not all! Take a look at some of our Environmental commitments from the recent World Environment Day:

Last but not least, a thank you to our colleagues

We really are grateful for our colleagues’ support, and as you can see your efforts really are making a difference. Please continue to support us by reducing as much waste as possible in the workplace by considering things like reducing the amount of paper you use through printing, and continue to save energy in the workplace by ensuring that lights and appliances are switched off when not in use.