Sustainable Business – NSScotland Sustainability Conference 2018

Director of sustainable business – Marks & Spencer

Mike Barry, Directory of Sustainable Business at Marks & Spencer presented at the NSScotland Sustainability Conference 2018. He gave insight into how they are tackling sustainability within the business, if you missed the conference here’s an opportunity to catch up on his presentation.

” Since 2012, Marks & Spencer has been procuring electricity from renewable sources and are a proud member of the RE100initaitve. In 2016/17 27% of the gas used in UK operations was from certified green bio-methane sources which reduced our emissions by 11,700 tonnes.  In 2015 Marks & Spencer completed installing the UKs largest roof mounted PV arrays on the roof on one of our warehouses:

• 24,272 PV panels on the roof will generate over 5,000 MWh of electricity per year (enough to power 1,190 houses).
• The energy generated will be enough to make the warehouse close to energy independent during daylight hours.
• The project will lower M&S’s Carbon footprint by 48,000 tonnesover 20 years.

Consumer awareness-raising programmes have also been run such as the “Wash at 30C/ Line dry promotion and labelling”, which was found to have changed the behaviour of 15% of M&S clothing customers. Customers can also benefit from investing in solar photovoltaic panels installed on the roofs of M&S stores. M&S crowdfunded +£1mil in 6 weeks with investment ranging from £100 – £100,000.