Environment

Welcome to the Environment section of the CR Report, which provides headline details of our environmental performance and the progress we have made in this important area since our Corporate Responsibility Programme, Good Together, launched in 2009.

What is the issue?

Why is this relevant to our business?

What are we doing?

How are we being a force for good?

Our new five year targets

What is the issue?

Our planet cannot sustain our current rate of consumption. With global population figures predicted to pass 9 Billion by 2050 (source: United Nations), demand for precious resources and the impact on our environment in trying to meet these demands is only going to increase unless we can find smarter ways to feed and clothe people, create and run our buildings and deal with the waste we all create every day.

Why is this relevant to our business?

As the UK's leading Hospitality Company with over 2,200 outlets, serving 19 million customers a month in the UK, and operations in 26 countries across the world, we need to find more efficient ways to heat and cool our buildings for the comfort of our guests and team members. We need to assure our guests we are looking after our environment in the way we source the goods and services we need to take care of them and that we are addressing key issues such as waste reduction and water scarcity.

What are we doing?

Environment is one of the 3 key pillars in our Good Together Programme.

Our aim is to make lives better for everyone by reducing our impact on the environment through our sector leading Carbon, Water and Waste programmes. These programmes include every part of our business operations from building and opening new sites, caring for our customers and working with our supply chains and communities.

We have a clear strategic approach for our 3 key environmental focus areas: carbon, waste, water (PDF, 119 kB)

How are we being a force for good?

We have a broad and well embedded environment programme as part of Good Together. The highlights below are an indication only of the breadth and depth of our activities in this area. For full details of all our environmental programmes and how we have achieved the headlines detailed below please read our 2012 Environment Report (PDF, 5.5 MB).

We are continuing to lead our sector in sustainable development, carbon reduction and energy efficiency, recognised by the BITC index and the Carbon Trust Standard.

We opened our 10th green-build low carbon hotel and restaurant site in 2012, a Table Table restaurant and Premier Inn in Camborne, Cornwall. The site includes numerous energy and water saving measures including LED lamps, super insulation, Solar PV and electric car charging pods.

- Carbon reduction

- Our significant investment and innovation in energy reduction initiatives has enabled us to achieve an absolute carbon emission reduction of 0.75%, whilst opening 29 new hotel and restaurant sites (incorporating 4,055 new bedrooms), more than 100 new Costa coffee stores and growing revenue by 11%.

- Relative to sales, our carbon emission efficiency has improved by 11%, in 2011/12, and by 20% from our 2009 base line. This puts us well on track to meeting our carbon reduction target of 25% by 2017.

- Our work to be one of the first companies in the UK to achieve the new 1SO 500001 compliance, for the Energy Management System at our Costa Coffee Roastery in Lambeth, enabled us to achieve 17% carbon reduction relative to production. Learn about what we've done to reduce environmental impacts in our roastery and Costa stores (PDF, 274 kB)

- Water reduction

We have achieved a 5% reduction in water use relative to sales this year, and a 9% water consumption reduction from our 2009 base line.

- Waste reduction

- Since 2009, we have diverted 83% of waste from our hotels and restaurants away from landfill and we are well on the way to achieving zero waste to landfill from these operations.