World Environment Day - Join in!
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Published 5 Jun 2024 in Colleagues
Today is World Environment Day. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), it provides an opportunity to celebrate our progress on our sustainability journey with a look ahead to what we plan to do next. Why not consider some simple actions to help tackle climate change?
Building a fairer, more ethical and sustainable future is at the heart of our Society’s purpose and over the last five years, we have made significant progress in reducing our environmental impact across our family of businesses, seeing a 32% reduction in our total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) since 2019.
In the last year alone, we have reduced energy usage across our sites by 11%, saving 5.2m kilowatts – the equivalent to saving £1.65m in electricity costs. We, in partnership with Big Solar Co-op, also plan on installing solar panels across 29 of our Food, Travel, Childcare and Head Office sites.
These achievements have been recognised with nominations for several awards including ‘Retailer of the Year’ at the UK Green Business Awards. Younity, our joint venture with Octopus Energy to support community energy producers, has also been recognised with nominations at the Better Society Awards 2024 and The British Renewable Energy Awards.
If World Environment Day has inspired you to think about how you can help the planet, there are lots of ways your Society can help you can make a difference.
Whether that is choosing Co-op Brand Meat, which is 100% British and sustainably produced, or swapping everyday essentials such as tea with a Fairtrade option, there are hundreds of small changes to our daily routines which we can make to do good together for the planet, including:
We know that there is more we can do – and another big part of our work is working with younger generations to inspire action. This is something where many of our colleagues play a vital role, where recently our Younity colleague, Amelia Crews, joined ‘Generation Hope’, a programme hosted by the Natural History Museum to inspire young people to talk about climate action. Amelia held an ‘in conversation’ session with school students about her experience so far working for Younity in community energy and joined scientists and activists to discuss how young people can get involved.
We appreciate we still have a way to go on our sustainability journey, but it’s one that we know our colleagues and members feel passionate about, and with your support, we can continue to do good together and go even further in the future.