The Consumer Focus Report ‘Green to the Core’ isn’t worth the recycled paper it’s written on. It’s inaccurate and misleading – and we can prove it!

A tough line to take so let me explain myself. I am supportive of Consumer Focus; in fact we are the only retailer working alongside them on a hugely important three-year project focusing on how we can help customers to make green choices. And yet the report rates us lower than the supermarkets who are not working with them.

In this report they have walked around one of our shops then made sweeping statements on our overall corporate policy. Imagine if I visited one school then stated that all schools in the UK are bad – that wouldn’t be fair but that is in effect what they have done here.

I could just point you in the direction of the prestigious awards we have won in this area to make my point but actually let me prove what I am saying by analysing the four areas they have ranked us on. Sorry if this blog post is a little long but I think it is important to set the record straight on behalf of our customers, who rightly expect us to protect the environment while bringing them great prices, not to mention our colleagues who work hard on this agenda every day.

Climate Change

• They say that we should put doors on all our freezers.
  
  
  • We accept this finding and are running trials now with doors on all our fridges and freezers in seven stores (very mixed customer reactions).
  
  

• They say that only 59% of our produce is from the UK.
  
  
  • This area is far more complicated than they understand. Our volumes are significantly higher than those of the Co-Op or M&S, who scored ‘A’, and so actual quantity of products sourced by us from the UK would be far in excess of those reported for them, ie we buy more volume from the UK than they do.
  • We believe in transparency and for the nine lines surveyed in July every products had UK sourcing – in terms of volume five were 100% UK sourced, one 85% UK sourced and only three lines majority overseas sourcing.
  • The report makes the reader believe that only five out of nine products were UK sourced to any extent.
  • Sourcing certain products from the UK would mean creating artificial growing environments with a higher carbon footprint than sourcing overseas and that is without considering the massive importance of our trade with developing countries so they can trade their way out of hunger.
  • We were the first retailer to create local sourcing hubs to make it possible for smaller producers to supply us and we continue to grow our locally sourced product lines.
  
  

• They did not bother to find out:
  
  
  • We will save £25 million this year alone in becoming more sustainable which we will pass back to our customers in lower prices – talk about a win-win.
  • Our total carbon output fell by 2.4% in 2007 and is on track to fall by a further massive 8% in 2009 alone – Tesco and M&S carbon footprints rose in 2007.
  • Our lorry emissions are almost 40% lower than in 2005 and we now drive 1.36 million fewer miles every month (more than 16 million less a year) and that is in the face of an increase of 18% in volume delivered – Sainsbury’s has an aspiration to be 15% lower by 2012 and Co-Op’s fleet emissions have actually risen.
  • We have reduced carbon emissions from existing stores by more than 20% than in 2005 and our new store model is 37% less carbon intensive.
  
  

Waste

• They say that only two of our Asda brand cereal products use FSC cardboard.
  
  
  • In fact 22% of our cereal boxes use FSC wood pulp and many others use recycled cardboard.
  • They say that there were only some FSC-certified toilet paper and kitchen towels.
  • In fact ALL of our toilet rolls and kitchen towels are either FSC or recycled – how can we do more than that?
  • Don’t take my word for it – Greenpeace ranked us as ‘B’ in 2007 and we believe we would now rank as ‘A’ on our current range.
  
  

• They say that there were no in-store recycling facilities.
  
  
  • In fact if they had looked in the car park they would have seen a wide range of recycling facilities and every store has carrier bag recycling.
  
  

• They didn’t bother to find out:
  
  
  • Morrisons got points for having a Bag for Life. We have always sold ours for no profit and were the first to remove carrier bags from view – where are our points?
  • We have already reduced our packaging by a massive 27% since 2006 – Tesco has a 15% aspiration by 2010 and Co-Op 15% by 2020!
  • We recycle all of our card and plastic through our own recycling centres – in fact we are 8% of the total cardboard recycling market.
  • We aim to send zero waste to landfill by the end of 2010 and already are close to 90% diverted including food waste.
  
  

Sustainable Fish

• They say that only a small proportion of fish is MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) certified.
  
  
  • In fact we will sell only sustainable fish by the end of 2010.
  • MSC is not the only rating of “sustainable” fish. If fish is not certified by MSC this does not mean it is not sustainable.
  • MSC does not apply to farmed fish (around half our fish sales) and why we are an active member in helping to develop a global sustainable farmed fish standard
  • The MCS (Marine Conservation Society), who manage the “fish to avoid list”, recognise that the detail isn’t necessarily relevant at a store level which why they themselves are currently surveying retailers’ fish sourcing standards at an individual species and fishery / catching method level instead.
  • They also state in our scorecard that we should offer more information on our website but then in their notes on this section say that our website was good!
  
  

Sustainable Farming

• They say that availability and promotion of organics, fairly-traded products and animal welfare has room for improvement, particularly because organic sales have dropped.
  
  
  • In fact the lead authority on organics, the Soil Association, in their 2009 report on the state of organics stated “Asda was the most successful multiple retailer in terms of organic sales growth”. They are far better placed to examine organics than Consumer Focus. See what the Soil Association says on Page 6 of the Organic market report
  • Organic sales have slowed for all retailers though which has meant that we had to delist some organic lines as they would otherwise have ended up as waste from our stores, clearly environmentally very bad.
  • It is misleading to assess animal welfare merely on stocking lines of freedom food branded products. Again the expert body, the RSPCA, thinks that too and ASDA won the Innovation in Animal Welfare Award in 2008 and George just won for 2009.
  • If they had bothered to travel to Scotland they would find we stock SSPCA-labelled pork products. This ground-breaking initiative has SSPCA (Scotland’s animal welfare charity) inspectors auditing our pig farms as well as the farm assurance auditors themselves.
  • Similarly, the ‘fairly traded’ assessment seems to be a crude count of fair trade products. Given the limited range of fair trade products available this cannot be a ‘fair’ measure of trading relationships.
  • The importance of this debate is debased by this facile and simplistic report. Merely examining input measures rather than outcomes is completely the wrong way to assess this – better to look at the engagement and accolades we have achieved, some as shown above.

I make no apologies for setting the record straight. To allow this to go unchecked would be a slap in the face for all our colleagues who are rightly proud of the work they have done to reduce our environmental impact and to help our customers to live greener lives.

Dare I say it that if they had read my own blogs they would have seen the amount of data we provide and how we enjoy discussing our policies in detail. I would have welcomed being able to discuss this report with them before it was released; then it could have been accurate.

The Consumer Focus report is embargoed for publication on Monday morning – but you can download it through this link.

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