CSER

Policy Statement

We believe that protection of the environment is everyone’s responsibility, and all employees are accountable for environmental performance.

We will ensure that every aspect of our activities is conducted in accordance with sound environmental practices. We will be conscious of the environment beyond our immediate operations and take steps to prevent pollution and minimise environmental harm. We will be proactive in minimising our production of waste and reusing or recycling of materials.

Our objectives and commitments to the environment and community are to ensure that we:

• Regularly review our procedures, practices and operations throughout the company and deal with specific issues where necessary.
• Regularly review our requirement and usage of food packaging; continuously working on reducing our packaging footprint and our use of single use plastics/packaging.
• Publicise our approach to CSER on our website.
• Minimise our food waste and working with charities to donate our food waste at the close of our store trading day.
• Minimise waste through re-using paper and containers, recycling paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, and printer cartridges.
• Actively pursue a paperless working environment through maximising electronic means of communication.
• Minimise energy use by switching off unused appliances, arranging the office to optimise natural light, improve insulation where appropriate, use low energy light fittings throughout our business.
• Minimise the impact of business transport, where possible, through walking/cycling, use public transport for longer journeys and/or car sharing.
• Hold meetings using technology (virtual meetings) to reduce the need to travel.
• Fit our vans with speed limiters to reduce their environmental impact.
• Pursue a policy of zero waste to landfill.
• Ensure that all of our employees make a commitment to work as sustainably as possible.
• Communicate this policy to all staff to promote awareness of their own responsibilities in this respect.
• Ensure that when selecting equipment and consumables that any environmental impact is taken into account.
• Work with suppliers and partners to promote improved environmental performance and encourage feedback.

Our Approach

Our approach is simple. We believe business should be a force for good and being socially responsible encompasses a whole host of good things. We’re on a journey, we don’t pretend to be perfect, and we strive to do the best we can, knowing this involves constant review of the status quo.

Our approach is holistic, encompassing all aspects of our business and we are committed to constantly improving.

Who we are as an employer

It is important our teams feel respected and valued.  Our ‘team working recipe’ is to be inclusive and to embrace and celebrate everyone’s differences. We wholeheartedly believe in creating a happy, honest, and inspiring working environment providing everyone with the opportunity to contribute, make a difference and be themselves.

Our Conscious Coffee

It’s how many of us start our day, so we want everyone to have the best kick-start to their morning. Since day one, our aim has always been to offer the most ethical and sustainable coffee we can source. Coffee is a precious commodity, and we never take for granted the care and attention that goes into responsibly growing, harvesting, and roasting every single full-bodied drop. We’re really proud of our coffee – it is the heart and soul of what we do. Taste, quality, sustainability and consciously sourced – our coffee not only tastes good, but it is also coffee you can order knowing that you’re doing good for the planet and the people that grow the beans too!

Our delicious beans are sourced and roasted for us by Clifton Coffee Roasters, based in Bristol. We chose Clifton as our coffee partner as they believe in transparent and ethical sourcing. 90% of the coffee volume is bought directly from origin through their own relationships, with their sourcing team travelling the world, creating, and maintaining partnerships and ensuring their buying program delivers across the three pillars of economic, environmental, and socially sustainable trade. Clifton works closely with co-operatives, private exporters, NGOs, and Indigenous Rights Groups to ensure that the coffees they sell are ethical, free from exploitation, and truly traceable.

In 2023, Clifton Coffee Roasters became a certified B Corporation. B Corps are for-profit companies who share a global vision of a sustainable and inclusive economy. It’s the only certification that measures a company’s entire social and environmental performance and they are proud to commit to prioritising people and planet before profit. We’ve also collaborated with Clifton Coffee Roasters on our coffee bean packaging. Now, our beans are delivered to our stores in 10kg boxes, significantly reducing excess packaging.

Our Food

As part of our pledge to support sound environmental practices, all our dairy milk comes from British, free-ranging, Red Tractor certified, pasture-fed cows producing the very best milk, supplied to us by a family-run dairy. It also goes without saying that all our eggs come fresh from free-range hens.

As we all become more informed about the environment and the consequences of climate change, increasingly, more of us are seeking “conscious eating”, reducing our meat intake, and choosing more plant-based food.

We already have a wide variety of vegan and veggie options, but it is our pledge to increasingly develop our menu so that it allows us all to make sound choices. Handmade in our kitchens every day using the freshest ingredients, we continue to ensure that we source as much as possible in keeping with our ethical principles.

Our Partners

It’s really important to us that our partners share our vision and ethos.

We’re proud to partner with a local bakery and cake-maker who provide us with our daily bread and delicious cakes, made to our own recipe, and delivered in biodegradable sheep’s wool insulated packs by low-emission vans. Where we can, we like to support local growers and producers.

Our Spring water partner Harrogate are proud to hold the international standard, ISO 14001:2015 for Environmental Management. The accreditation is held by only the most ambitious and environmentally committed companies in the world who meet or surpass rigorous internationally set measures. Effective environmental management through successful implementation of company-wide systems and practices helps improve their  performance and efficiencies, helping them to reduce waste.

Our potatoes are purchased through a family farm (Fairfield’s), and they are on a path to get to carbon neutral, and then on to net zero. As an independent business that grows their own crop and makes their own product, they have a huge amount of control of our supply chain. They are currently reducing emissions by:

• Using carbon neutral packaging
• Using farming methods which capture carbon, taking it from the air to the ground, such as green cover crops over winter and dedicated areas of greenery for wild birds
• When disturbing the soil, using methods that reduce the release of carbon (for example light tilling versus deep ploughing)
• Using biodiesel in their tractors – and the oil used to cook our potatoes is converted to biodiesel!
• Having annual tree and hedge planting programmes
• Building reservoirs and laying underground pipes to reduce the energy needed to pump water around the farm
• Using renewable energy on site

Ethical sourcing, environmental responsibility and traceability are key components for our partners. As part of this, a drive to reduce carbon footprints and increase efficient business practices is at the forefront of all our minds.

Doing the right thing starts at home

• Our kitchen is highly insulated so the energy we use only goes on what we need.
• Our vans have speed limiters on them, reducing fuel usage and, rather than multiple deliveries, our drivers do round robin trips with everything our stores need in one drop.
• 100% of our cardboard is recycled via Hereford Paper for another life cycle in packaging.
• All our lights at our Support Hub are PIR so they only come on when we need them, and they’re LED when they do.
• We save non-recyclable plastic mushroom trays from the skip, giving them a second life when we deliver them to John, our local PYO fruit and vegetable grower.
• All our on-site waste is either recycled, composted, or incinerated. Zero waste goes to landfill. This includes plastic and metals.
• We’re in the process of organising our kitchen scraps going to anaerobic digestion, to generate energy and then be turned into compost.

Packaging

We’re committed to making it as easy as possible for us all to do the right thing.

The boxes for our take-away SOHO spuds close the sustainability loop nicely. Being made of corn waste, a by-product of sugar cane crops, also means they’re fully biodegradable once our customers have enjoyed lunch.

We have introduced fully biodegradable sandwich packs, even the acetate window is biodegradable.

We offer a discount to customers who bring in their own re-usable cups with an obvious ambition to drive the consumption of disposable products down. This allows customers freedom of decision and positively encourages the greener choice. We have also introduced our own reusable cups for purchase in our stores to help make this easier. We have moved our disposable consumption downwards by more than 35% in the last two years. 

Cardboard packaging generated by our central production facility is recycled locally. We have used the income raised through this process to fund coats for local school children and contribute to global relief efforts.

Plastic

Unfortunately, plastic is still the easiest and most practical way to package our food, so it remains fresh and easy for customers to grab on-the-go. We have made sure that all our plastic packaging is made of the same type of plastic, which is easily recycled at home or work, keeping it out of the waste stream. And, bit by bit, we’re increasingly using recycled plastic that has already had a previous life.

We’re well on our way to achieving the targets we’ve set ourselves – in line with the international Plastics Pact to achieve the following by 2025:

• 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
• 70% of plastic packaging is effectively recycled or composted.
• To take actions to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single use packaging items.
• 30% average recycled content across all plastic packaging.

We’re constantly encouraging our teams through training and engagement not to offer items unless they’re asked for.

Our Pledge: to continue to review the host of different materials coming onto the market and do our best to make sure that any alternative we go with is widely supported by easy collection and accessible recycling or waste facilities, at home and out and about, so that doing the right thing is easy for us all, wherever we are.

Food Waste

There’s a delicate balance between maintaining the right level of fresh food on the shelves and not overstocking, leading to food waste.

We have always been and continue to be focused on reducing food waste and wherever possible ensure that this is redistributed for consumption to help others rather than add to land-fill. For many years our partnership with Trinity Church in Cheltenham sees any left-over food distributed to the homeless. As we grow, and wherever we can, we aim to partner with a local charity to have any excess food re-distributed to those in need. We’ve also recently partnered with the Felix Project in London to trial collections. Food is distributed to The Salvation Army and other charities.

Our partnership with Too Good to Go further enables us to reduce food waste and by doing so, reduce the CO2 footprint associated with this waste. So far we have saved over 47’000 meals, which means we have also saved over 115’000 kilos of CO2.

Charity

We strongly believe in supporting the communities we work in, setting ambitious targets for contributions raised through in-store events and other fund-raising activities. The work that we do with our charity of the year program forms a key focus for our teams every year, alongside our cash for coats and other smaller initiatives that we take part in.