Great Big Green Week - Let’s shout about saving energy!

It's Great Big Green Week, so let's take a look at our own energy saving success stories and help encourage colleagues to create even more awareness by joining in the climate change community spirit.

The Great Big Green Week – 24 September to 2 October

The energy crisis is having a huge impact on all of us, so our Energy Reduction Steering Group has been working with colleagues, initially across our food stores, to support and advise on how to save energy. Even little steps such as turning off lights when not needed add up to big savings. So far, we’ve had great success and in the first six months of this year our food stores have saved over 1.1 million kwh compared to the same time last year (across like for like Stores), that’s equivalent to more than 250 tonnes CO2, and £291K in energy costs. All this activity supports our pledge announced at our AGM earlier this year to reduce our direct greenhouse gas emissions by 50% over the next 5 years.

This is just one example of the great sustainability work our Society is championing.  As a business we’re also making good progress in reducing our waste and plastic footprint, having announced at our AGM earlier this year that we pledge to remove all remaining single-use plastic from food stores.  Initiatives to date include replacing single-use plastic shopping bags with compostable bags across our Food Stores, reducing 8 million plastic bags per year, and rolling out soft plastic recycling facilities to the majority of our food stores, ensuring all communities that we serve to have this service in place and enabling 100% of Co-op own brand packaging to be widely recyclable. 

Further impacts have been achieved by working with other Co-ops through FRTS, for example during Easter 10,000 plastic-free Easter eggs were sold across Co-op Retail Societies, saving 12 tonnes of plastic.   

We think that deserves a big green round of applause. But why not shout about your own sustainability projects and help raise awareness of climate change during The Great Big Green Week? Join tens of thousands of people all across the UK in celebrating the heartfelt actions people are taking to fight against climate change.

Great idea but what can we do?

Last year more than 5,000 events celebrated how communities are taking action to tackle climate change and protect green spaces. Bake-offs, bat walks, football matches, murals even seaweed foraging were just a few events that helped raise awareness.

Go on, shout about how your store or community is taking action to tackle climate change and get involved!  Like to know more?