Olympics, Taking Climate Action, Cross Trading

With the Tokyo Olympics drawing to a close last weekend, it turned out to be a great success and provided some much needed moments of joy and inspiration for the athletes, spectators and the world just when it was needed.  With Team GB again rising to the occasion to finish 4^th place in the medals table with 65 medals part of that success is due to lottery funding which has propelled GB to be a top 4 nation. Lottery funding was introduced in 1997 after the Atlanta games in 1996 where GB finished 36^th and since then more than 5,000 elite athletes have benefitted from National Lottery funding which comes from the public playing the lottery. Swimmer Adam Peaty's gold medal in the pool during the games was the 100th won by a British Olympic athlete since National Lottery funding was introduced for sport. 

Of course, it’s not just the funding that made the difference, the unbelievable dedication, and personal sacrifices that the athletes made to be their best are truly remarkable and even more so considering the recent events.  Some athletes have recorded a special thank you for the help you and the lottery provided, click here to watch it. 

Climate Action

The reports of extreme heat and wildfires across Europe has served as a timely reminder of the impact of climate change and coincided with the publishing of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report this week.  The IPCC report has laid bare the extent of the climate emergency we face but also shows that if we work together now to reduce emissions, we can still prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

This has long been a focus for co-ops, and we know it’s a priority for our members, colleagues and customers.  We’ve already introduced a wide range of measures to reduce our carbon footprint as a Society, including procuring green electricity across our Trading sites and reducing over 7,000 tonnes of C02 since 2010 as a result of our year on year energy savings.  As a long-standing supporter of community power, we support more than 100 renewable community energy projects across the UK, enabling our members and customers to live low carbon and socially responsible lifestyles through our Co-op Community Power tariff.  

We’re also working with co-ops around the world to make a positive difference, supporting Fairtrade and initiatives in areas where people are already profoundly feeling the effects of climate change in their daily lives.  We also know through our cooperative values that by working in partnership with others we can make an even bigger difference.  You can read how co-ops reacted to the report and how they are taking climate action here.

Cross trade across our Trading areas

One of our key strategic aims is to increase member trade and part of this is to grow the number of members that use more than one of our businesses. Recently some of our trading groups have been working together to achieve this with some impressive results. 

The partnership between Your Co-op travel and Your Co-op Pharmacy to provide Travel customers with COVID test kits at cost price has proved to be a real success. Travel customers are given an exclusive voucher code to redeem when they book with us to get the kits at cost price and this has contributed to a 20 fold increase in sales on the Healthcare website, which is up 1300% year on year.

This comes at a time when our Travel business has also been rated ‘Green’ by the Which? Holiday checker, providing further reassurance to members and customers in our approach to supporting them at this time, which is great news.

Furthermore, the exponential sales growth, the likes of which Healthcare has never experienced has been made all the greater considering that the Healthcare Hub recently relocated to a new premise in Walsall.  A phenomenal effort from everyone involved to complete this relocation without compromising on service. A well done to all the team involved especially colleagues Stuart Newman, Raj Patel, Debbie Richings, Phil Wilkes, Kate Jordan, Alison Round and Julian Wilkins. I look forward to visiting the hub soon.