"Every Little Helps"

Tesco has released its latest corporate responsibility review which outlines the key aims of becoming a "leader in the low carbon economy". These include adopting a number of measures to become climate-friendly. They have landmark plans, such as building renewables on-site, launching a £100 million climate technologies fund, and carbon labelling goods in store.

Tesco’s new climate friendly policies fall neatly in line with recently announced plans by the UK government to include supermarkets in the emissions trading scheme and encourage a carbon labelling scheme into place, which may one day be mandatory.

Tesco has pledged to cut energy usage per square foot by 50% by the beginning of next year compared to 2000 levels, to cut emissions in half by 2020, triple its recycling, and improve in-store climate communications for customers.

It backs up these pledges by putting money into new environmentally friendly refits for their stores, costing an estimated total of £500 million, as well as into research.

A separate investment of £100 million will go into developing low carbon technologies and £5 million into Tesco’s new Institute for Sustainable Consumption that has been set up with the help of Oxford University. The institute will be working out how consumer information initiatives such as carbon labelling and recycling information are going to work.

Tesco has suggested it will roll out a carbon-labelling scheme in a few years time. Meanwhile the UK government recently announced plans to develop a carbon labelling methodology within 18 months in conjunction with the major supermarkets and the Carbon Trust.