Please note that the questions and answers below contain our most recent achievements and updates.
Caring for the Environment
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We want to play a leadership role in tackling climate change. Despite the recession, customers want to be green and expect us to be too.
We employ 470,000 people around the world, and many more people work in firms and businesses supplying our stores. Our aim is to mobilise collective action among customers, suppliers and employees, to help protect the environment, and generate a mass movement in green consumption.
Our climate change programme has three main parts:
- Leading by example – reducing our own direct carbon footprint;
- Working with our supply chains and partners to reduce emissions more broadly; and
- Leading a revolution in green consumption.
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How are you making changes to your business to reduce your own carbon footprint?
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We are committed to becoming a genuinely zero-carbon business by 2050. In the interim, to move towards this goal, we will:
- halve emissions from existing buildings by 2020, against a baseline of 2006;
- halve distribution emissions from each case of goods delivered by 2012, against a 2006 baseline;
- halve emissions from new stores by 2020, compared with an equivalent store built in 2006;
- reduce the carbon impact of the products in our supply chain by 30% by 2020 through work with our suppliers; and
- work with others to identify clear ways in which our customers can halve their personal and domestic carbon footprints by 2020.
We are already making good progress towards meeting these targets. Since 2006, we have built a series of environmental stores in every country in which we operate.
Our store at Cheetham Hill in Manchester, which opened in January, has a carbon footprint 70% smaller than an equivalent store built in 2006 and, planning permitting, will be a model for stores built in the UK from now on. In December, we will open our new zero-carbon in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire.
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What is the Sustainable Consumption Institute and why are you funding research there?
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In 2007, we committed £25 million to create a new Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) at the University of Manchester. The SCI examines how to make a consumer society sustainable and focuses on four areas:
- Understanding consumers: their behaviours and lifestyles, and what can influence and motivate change.
- Patterns of consumption: how customers shop, and the role of retailers can play in reducing our carbon emissions.
- Products and supply chain: understanding the carbon impact of what customers buy and consume.
- Making development more sustainable: searching for low-carbon development paths which support growth in both developed and developing counties.
We are hoping to use their findings to help us move towards a more sustainable business model. For more information visit: www.manchester.ac.uk/sci
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What are you doing to reduce carbon emissions from your supply chain?
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We are working closely with our supply chains and partners. For example we are exploring distribution efficiencies with Unilever intended to remove 173,000 lorry miles by 2010.
Distribution accounts for 11% of our carbon footprint in the UK. We have reduced our emissions per case delivered from our distribution network by 17% (from a 2006 baseline). To achieve our 2012 target, we are doing more by:
- using our vehicles more efficiently e.g. improving trailer fill and investing in double deck trailers
- using alternative transport e.g. train and barge
- investing in new technology e.g. software to plan the most efficient routes and also to help our people drive our lorries in the most fuel efficient way.
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Customers have let us know that there are three things which prevent them from making greener choices. They are:
- a lack of information;
- being green is more expensive;
- a feeling that individual actions make no difference.
We have tackled these issues directly.
Lack of information:
- We’ve addressed a lack of information by our pioneering work on carbon labelling. We have worked with the Carbon Trust and key suppliers to develop an innovative universal carbon footprint label to help customers understand the impact of the goods they buy. This August we carbon labelled milk, a common household good which has led to the carbon footprint being found in millions of homes.
Issue of cost:
- To tackle the issue of cost, over the last year we promoted sales of energy efficient light bulbs in the UK, trebling our range and selling over 15 million energy efficient light bulbs in 54 weeks – the equivalent of turning off two 1,000MW power stations. We have permanently halved the price of energy efficient light bulbs, increasing sales six fold since 2006.
Making a difference:
- Our carrier bag initiatives have been designed to give customers a sense of empowerment. Since launching green Clubcard points in August 2006 in the UK to reward customers who reuse their bags, they have helped us save over three billion carrier bags. Our target, with the help of our customers is to cut carrier bag use by 70% by 2010.
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Waste is one of the key measures of store performance. In the UK we now divert 100% of our store waste from landfill (530k tonnes per annum). This has been achieved a year ahead of target and we are the first retailer to do so.
New technologies including sending some of our food waste to a waste processing site where it is used to create renewable energy have enabled us to achieve this target in August this year.
We are the largest recycler of cardboard in the UK, recycling our own waste cardboard into boxes which we can use again in a closed loop system. We recycle our waste plastic into carrier bags and blend our waste chicken fat and cooking oil into bio diesel, which runs our lorries.
Tesco wants to play its part in helping the environment by ensuring that none of our waste goes to landfill. Landfill sites produce damaging methane gas so by diverting our food waste from landfill we can reduce these methane emissions and help tackle climate change.
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Yes, we aim to reduce our packaging by 15% by 2010. We are collaborating with over 250 suppliers on over 3,600 packaging reduction initiatives for both own label and branded products, sharing our knowledge, supporting them to make the right changes. We have completed over 2,000 packaging initiatives and are currently working on over 1,000 other ideas.
We are also working with our customers. This year we ran a depackaging trial in two of our stores (Guildford, Surrey and Ilminster, Somerset). The trials gave our customers the chance to remove any packaging, which they deemed unnecessary from their products, after purchase. We then recycled this packaging.
This trial was important for us to get customer feedback on our packaging. For example, yogurt sleeves were regularly returned in the trials and so we are using the findings of this trial in our work with several dairy suppliers to reduce this packaging.
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In the UK we have recycling centres at 600 of our larger stores and last year we helped customers to recycle over 200,000 tonnes, saving the equivalent of over one million bin bags of recyclable material from being thrown away. We also have 80 automated recycling units across the UK which accept many items from carrier bags and plastic to glass and metal which makes recycling quick, easy and convenient for customers.
We have been piloting ‘Recycling on the Go’ machines at 10 of our smaller format stores in Essex, Hertfordshire and Hampshire. These are designed to capture recyclable plastic bottles and cans from shoppers, pedestrians and office workers as an alternative to disposing of material in conventional waste bins.
Our Polish stores have held waste paper collections where customers received free plants or tree seedlings for bringing their waste into the store whilst in Malaysia, at our Ampang store customers are paid to recycle according to a set price schedule based on tonnage of recycled items.
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This is a sensitive issue on which we have always listened to our customers. In the UK no Tesco branded foods contain genetically modified ingredients. Where we do sell non-Tesco brand products with GM ingredients, they are clearly labelled so customers can make their own choice.
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In line with EU regulations we have biofuel blends in all of our forecourts. We are aware that the impacts of biofuels are complex and the environmental benefits depend on how they are made. We have asked the Sustainable Consumption Institute at Manchester University to investigate this issue further for us.
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Water supply and water depletion are major environmental issues linked to climate change. Our own business is relatively non-water intensive, but water usage is a bigger issue in our supply chain. It is a very complex area and we are working with the Environmental Consultancy ERM once we have commissioned the work to understand the issue and what we can do to help.
In the meantime we are trialling a number of initiatives to reduce our water use. We sell a range of water saving products and are deploying various water saving initiatives throughout our business worldwide, including rainwater harvesting, school water conservation campaigns in Turkey and closed water circulation car washes in our Polish distribution centres. This year our Chinese business will begin rainwater harvesting and using grey water in toilets and to wash vehicles.
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We recognise the importance of the Amazon for the crucial role rainforests play in addressing climate change. We do not source products from the rainforest.
In the case of beef, we have made it clear to our suppliers that the use of beef from illegally deforested regions is unacceptable and through our work with suppliers, we ensure that no illegal beef is used in our products. We have also sought and received assurances from our Brazilian suppliers that the beef products they supply to Tesco do not come from the Amazon.
On the issue of soy, we are signed up members to the Moratorium on soy from the Amazon biome. As such, we source no soy from the Amazon rainforest and this is controlled through an internationally recognised traceability scheme.
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We are partners of the Prince’s Rainforests Project which was set up to promote awareness of the urgent need to take action against tropical deforestation, a major contributor to climate change.
To coincide with the launch of the project’s Rainforest SOS in early September, we undertook activity in selected stores, offices and online to gain support for the project and we will continue to support their future activity.
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As full members of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) we are committed to using sustainable palm in our product range.
We do not use palm oil in any of our products. We do use derivatives and, at present, the traceability and certification of the derivatives of palm oil are still in their infancy. The flow of certified palm oil to derivatives is going to take time.
We have made a public commitment to use 100% sustainable palm oil in our products by 2015. This year we have supported further improvements around the environmental standards in the RSPO to reduce the chances of deforestation and increase controls on CO2 emissions.
We have also joined a coalition of over 50 UK-based companies calling on the industry to stop all deforestation of rainforest and peat forests for palm oil expansion.
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Fish is an affordable meal solution which forms an important part of a healthy diet. We are committed to providing our customers with sustainable fish for the best price. We seek to buy all our seafood from responsibly managed fisheries, to maintain a viable and long-term future for wild fish and shellfish populations.
To ensure we can provide affordable, good quality sustainable fish to our customers we have developed our own robust system for evaluating fisheries and strict codes of practice, including sustainability criteria, which our suppliers must meet.
All our farmed fish suppliers must follow our Codes of Practices, on a number of issues from environmental management to fish feed. These are audited by an independent third party to make sure they fully meet our standards.
To help our customers make informed decisions about the fish they buy we label all of our fresh fish with the species name in Latin, catch area and catch method.
Actively Supporting Local Communities
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A Community Champion is a Tesco member of staff whose time is dedicated to co-ordinating community and charity activity for their store. They help their store support local initiatives, organisations and charities as well as our national initiatives. They know what matters most to the people in their area and can do something about it.
For example, staff from Haslingden helped a school to prepare the ground for a vegetable patch and donated money towards gardening tools. They visit the school regularly to support their progress through the ‘Tesco school gardens’ lesson plans, through which children learn about growing and eventually cooking their own home-grown vegetables.
We are continuing to roll out Community Champions internationally. Recently we have introduced Community Champions in Ireland where we now have champions in 11 stores. We also have community champions in China, Korea, Malaysia, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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In the UK since 2000 we have opened stores which revitalise disadvantaged areas by working in partnership with local agencies. These stores are known as Regeneration Partnership stores.
In our Regeneration Partnership stores as part of the recruitment process we offer job opportunities to local people who have been unemployed for at least six months, including those with low numeracy and literary skills and people with disabilities.
Unlike most other employment schemes, we guarantee a job to the people who complete Tesco training. In Cheetham Hill, Manchester, more than a fifth of the total local unemployed got a job through the store’s Regeneration Partnership earlier this year.
We were one of the first companies to work with the UK Government in Local Employment Partnerships, designed to provide jobs for the long-term unemployed. We are committed to a Local Employment Partnership wherever we open a store. In 2008, we won a Best Practice Recruitment award for our new store in Aston, Birmingham, where we hired almost two-thirds of the workforce through the Partnership.
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How do you work with communities around your international stores?
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We work with each local community in a way that best benefits them and reflects their cultural sensitivities. In South Korea, we have over 90 culture centres to support the education of children and adults alike in subjects, such as languages, music and dance.
We also support local and national charitable causes through our Charity of the Year in a number of international markets and by seeking out other charitable partnerships where possible. In Thailand, the Tesco for Thais Foundation raises contributions for the Royal Family’s charitable projects and supports education for disadvantaged children. The Foundation also provides school scholarships and training in-store for retail management undergraduates.
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Yes.
- As a group, Tesco gave £57 million to good causes last year – 1.9% of pre-tax profits.
- Each year in the UK we also choose a different charity to become our Charity of the Year and this charity then becomes the main focus for staff and customer fundraising. Last year, our staff and customers raised over £6.6 million for our then Charity of the Year, Marie Curie Cancer Care.
- We have Charity of the Year in six other countries as well, including the Smile Foundation in Hungary and ‘Make A Wish’ in Ireland.
- The Tesco Charity Trust is a key way for us to support charities on a local, national and international level. For more information, please see ‘What is the Tesco Charity Trust?’.
- We also work with Cancer Research UK in our support of Race for Life, a 5K run for women to raise money in support of research into cancer treatment.
- Charities can collect outside our stores; see ‘How do I arrange a charity collection outside one of your stores?’ for more information.
- We have a variety of other local and national partnerships with charities to make a difference.
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The Trust was set up on 1 June 1987 to support both national and local community charities, and to add a 20% top-up to staff fundraising. It is run by a board of trustees recommended by the main board of Tesco PLC.
The Tesco Charity Trust provides donations to UK registered charities that work locally, nationally and internationally and you may be eligible.
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What are the criteria for applying for charitable funding from Tesco?
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This depends upon your size as an organisation.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.tescoplc.com/plc/corporate_responsibility_09/community/making_difference/charitablegiving/tesco_charity_trust/ -
How do I arrange a charity collection outside one of your stores?
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We have an agency called Lime who book all charitable activity outside our Superstores and Extra stores between January and November, during December stores manage their own bookings.
Metro stores manage their own bookings all year round and we do not book collections outside our Express stores. For more information on how to apply for a charity collection, please go to:
http://www.tescoplc.com/plc/corporate_responsibility_09/community/making_difference/charitablegiving/store_level/ -
Yes, all stores hold a community donation budget which can be used to donate raffle prizes to local charities and community groups. To request a donation please write to your local Tesco store.
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I'd like to pack bags in our local Tesco store to raise money for charity. How can I arrange this?
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Our stores manage their own bag packing bookings and can book one event per month. To request a booking please write to your local Tesco store.
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How do you support staff with fundraising for their chosen charity?
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The Tesco Charity Trust gives a 20% top-up to all staff fundraising.
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What is the Charity of the Year this year in the UK and how are Tesco helping them?
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The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign is the UK Charity of the Year 2009. We are aiming to raise £3 million to provide vital, specialist equipment for children with muscular dystrophy or a related muscle-wasting disease that will allow them to live happier, more independent lives.
It costs approximately three times as much to raise a disabled child as it does to raise a non-disabled child. Equipment costs contribute a large part of this with powered wheelchairs costing anywhere between £7,000 and £27,000, electric beds costing £5,000 and even simple pieces of equipment, such as mobile arm supports, coming in at around £2,000. Our fundraising will help the purchase of such equipment, which really can transform the quality of life of children with a muscle-wasting disease.
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Muscular dystrophy is a devastating, incurable and life-limiting condition that causes muscles to waste away, making children progressively weaker and preventing them from performing simple tasks that we take for granted, such as turning the pages of a book or brushing their hair.
It is estimated that over 8,000 babies and children in the UK have muscular dystrophy or a related muscle-wasting disease. Tragically, many children with muscle-wasting diseases do not live to reach adulthood because, as the condition progresses, it causes the muscles that control the heart and lungs to stop working.
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There are many ways which you can help raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign from actively fundraising to simply buying certain products in store.
For example our range of Charity Greetings Cards aim to raise £250,000 with a 10p donation from each pack sold made to the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. Other products include Adnams Lighthouse Beer where 20p per bottle sold will go to the charity.
You can also buy a specially designed £10 Tesco Giftcard with a donation of 50p from this going to the charity. 5 year old Bradley Addison who has muscular dystrophy designed the playground theme.
You can help out free of charge by using a cash machine at Tesco where for every transaction* made including checking your balance, withdrawing cash and topping up your mobile phones, a donation will be made. It's hoped that this will raise around £50,000!
* Your card issuer may charge you for credit card cash advances and transactions with cards issued outside the UK.
For more information, please visit: www.muscular-dystrophy.org/tesco
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Sudan: We have given £15,000 to support the Red Cross Specialist Feeding Centre which treats hundreds of moderately malnourished children, who attend once a week to receive a life-saving pre-mixed corn soya blend, as well as medical care.
Kenya: We have donated £25,000 to support the extreme drought affecting the country and subsequent food security problems. The money will also provide seeds for 3,520 households helping over 21,000 people ensure a good harvest for the future.
We also supported the Asia Pacific Disaster Appeal with a donation of £50,000, which will help buy lifesaving relief items such as blankets, food parcels and kitchen utensils to bring immediate relief to families affected by these disasters.
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Tesco have been supporting Cancer Research UK's Race for Life for the last eight years and our staff have raised over £6.2 million in that time. We get thousands of women each year to sign up and take part. It's a great way for us to help staff and customers in our local communities to lead active and healthy lifestyles.
In 2009 over 730,000 women took part, including 19,485 Tesco staff. In 2010 we are hoping thousands more women will come together to walk, jog or run the 5k course to help raise over £60 million to fund Cancer Research UK's life saving work into all types of cancer. To find out more and sign up, visit: http://www.tesco.com/raceforlife/
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Tesco for Schools and Clubs
This year, in the UK, we have responded to customer and school feedback and have merged Computers for Schools and Sport for Schools to create Tesco for Schools and Clubs, a single system making it easier to collect and redeem vouchers.The scheme covers all areas of the curriculum making it simple for schools and clubs to choose what they need. This year, over 32,000 schools and clubs have ordered equipment worth £12.5 million – an increase of 45% participation on the previous year.
Tesco Great School Run
The Great School Run, which is in its 5th year, is a 2k fun run staged at schools across the UK encouraging children to take part in exercise for fun, and to help make physical activity part of each school's and every family's lifestyle.In June 2009 over one million children from 4,400 primary schools took part in the Tesco Great School Run.
FA Tesco Skills Programme
Tesco is working with the FA in this football skills programme as part of a commitment to helping children get active as we all believe that sport is a great way to get fit and healthy.So far, 1,270,358 children have attended a FA Tesco skills coaching session in England.
For more information on all of these initiatives, visit: http://www.tesco.com/schools/
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How are you supporting the education of children internationally?
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We have initiatives similar to the UK Tesco for Schools and Clubs in many of our international markets:
- In the US, in September we launched another year of our ‘Shop for Schools’ project where we give $1 for every $20 spent at stores back to participating schools. The first year of the project helped raise over $130,000 for schools in California, Arizona and Nevada. The money raised went toward anything the schools needed most, from art supplies and books to playground equipment.
- We also have a Computers for Schools Programme in Turkey. Last year, we distributed 264 products including computers, printers and projectors to 60 schools.
- In Poland this year we ran an environmental competition as part of our Tesco for Schools initiative. Children were required to take part in quizzes, games and creative tasks, all focused on the environment.
We also work in other ways with children across our international markets:
- In Hungary, we have held Green competitions and introduced Green champions for schools. Schools have been encouraged to bring back PET bottles and aluminium cans to stores and the class which brought the highest number of these items won a class excursion.
- In South Korea we have developed a network of 91 Culture Centres with 850,000 members and 5,000 professional instructors. These centres provide more than 350 educational courses, for both children and adults in subjects such as languages, music and dance.
- In Turkey, we are helping to explain climate change to young children through a partnership with Unilever, the educational charity Tocev, and the Ministry of Education. We have created a movie and stage play called The Footprints of Tomorrow for primary school children which has the message that ‘Together we can make a difference.’
Buying and Selling our Products Responsibly
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How do you make sure that your buyers treat suppliers fairly?
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We have thousands of suppliers from around the world, ranging from farmers and small companies delivering a single product directly to a few local stores, to large multinational companies whose products we stock in all our markets.
One of our core values is to treat people how we like to be treated. We build long-term relationships with our suppliers and offer fair terms and conditions.
We work to ensure that suppliers are given good lead times on orders, to help them manage their business efficiently. By way of example, in Clothing this year we ordered around a third of our swimwear, women's outerwear and slippers out of season to help our suppliers balance out peaks and troughs of production and manage workers' working hours effectively.
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We are British agriculture’s number one customer. All our fresh milk and eggs are British and 95% of our fresh beef, 90% of our fresh chicken and 70% of both our fresh pork and lamb are British.
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We regularly meet with our UK farmers to share information that will help them understand customer trends so that they can plan their farming activities. This helps to ensure that they are producing goods when they are most in demand. Tesco team members attend the meetings so that farmers can talk to us and ask questions to help them understand our business more clearly.
The results of these meetings have been positive. By helping our suppliers we have extended the growing season for British strawberries which has resulted in a reduction of the number of strawberries we import from 25% to 14% over the last five years.
Suppliers, such as farmers, also have more accessibility to Tesco than ever before through the head office buying teams and the local buying offices which are based throughout the UK.
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Yes, we currently stock around 4,000 local products and work with over 400 local and national suppliers. Our network of regional buying offices work with small local suppliers to help them to meet our standards and bring their products to their local community. To see what’s on offer in your region, visit: http://www.tesco.com/regionalsourcing/
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In England, we class a product as local if it is produced in that county or a neighbouring one. We source Scottish, Welsh and northern Irish local products from within these areas. These criteria mean that some local products may only be available in one or two stores.
Local products may be famous, iconic lines such as Laverbread (Welsh seaweed) or simply produced in that area e.g. strawberries or carrots. Local products can be branded, such as Henderson’s relish (a spicy Yorkshire sauce made for 100 years) or Tesco own label, such as Tesco East Anglian carrots.
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We believe that, in general, international trade helps people in developed and developing countries improve their quality of life, creating jobs and raising standards. The extraordinary record of export-led growth and poverty reduction in China and other parts of Asia bears testimony to this.
At the same time, we recognise that regulation and levels of enforcement of labour standards vary in different countries. And we know that our customers want to be confident that everything they buy is produced under decent conditions, and everyone involved is treated fairly.
As a founder member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), we therefore expect all our suppliers to meet the standards set out under the ETI Base Code (www.ethicaltrade.org) and guarantee their workers the rights within it - whichever country they operate in, including the UK. This includes clear requirements that there is no harsh treatment of workers, no discrimination, that the right to collective bargaining be respected, as well as guidance on wages - plus of course no child or forced labour.
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How do you ensure that suppliers keep to the standards which you set?
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The first stage in ensuring this is by assessing all potential new suppliers to ensure they are capable of meeting the standards set out in the ETI Base Code. If they are not, we will not work with them. We then monitor the suppliers we do work with by using vetted, qualified independent ethical auditors to visit production sites. Any problems they find must be remedied.
We're also exploring new ways to ensure workers have access to good grievance and whistleblower systems, in case their concerns are not taken seriously at a factory level or not spotted by audits. And we've now got in-country experts in countries that face some of the most difficult challenges in labour standards, to help suppliers address these challenges and further improve working conditions.
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As a founder member of the Ethical Trading Initiative, we expect all our suppliers to meet the ETI Base Code, including its guidance on wages. In Bangladesh, we have worked with others to lobby the Government to increase the minimum wage. We have taken steps to ensure that our suppliers employ no workers on the lowest paid 'training' grade. We are also increasing our support to suppliers to help them improve productivity and develop long-term plans to increase wages and reduce working hours.
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How do you acknowledge suppliers who are working hard to continually improve labour standards?
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In October we issued the first Tesco Trading Fairly Awards, for suppliers who have worked hard to improve labour standards for workers proved their commitment to ensure great working conditions.
These first Awards went to three Clothing suppliers including the Cambodian supplier M&V, who have created 3,300 good jobs in the last few years in one of the poorest areas of the country. M&V provide us with women's clothing and have gone to great lengths to invest in their team and improve productivity.
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We understand that many customers have strong views - from a wide variety of positions - about the situation in the Middle East.
As a responsible retailer, we take very seriously our duty to ensure that all our products are safe and legal. Our approach is therefore to follow UK and EU guidelines. These require that products from this area be labelled clearly with their regional indication.
Packaging labels on all our products therefore show clearly whether the product is from Israel or from the West Bank. Customers can then choose whether to buy the product on the basis of this information.
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We offer a range of over 125 Fairtrade lines and we are continually looking to add to our offer. Currently the range includes tea, coffee, chocolate, fresh produce, wine, roses and cotton.
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How do you ensure high levels of animal welfare in your supply chain?
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We are strongly committed to high welfare standards and aim to continually improve welfare standards across our offer, from Value to Finest. We demand equivalent welfare standards when we import meat, so UK farmers are not disadvantaged.
We are the only supermarket to have a dedicated agriculture team to monitor the latest science, work with our suppliers and ensure Codes of Practice are enforced. By providing clear information and labelling we enable customers to make an informed choice, at the same time as promoting higher welfare products.
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We are committed to high welfare standards for broiler chickens and egg laying chickens, and we are independently audited to these standards.
We are also committed to enabling and encouraging our customers to buy higher welfare products, for example through price promotions, providing clear information and introducing higher welfare options such as our Willow Farm chickens and eggs, at a lower price than free range or organic products. Willow Farm chicken is housed in spacious barns at the RSPCA-recommended stocking density, with straw bales to perch on and large windows providing the birds with natural light.
However, a large number of our customers are on tight budgets and rely on lower cost foods to feed their families so we believe it would be wrong to remove these choices from them.
Giving Customers Healthy Choices
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To support customers in living healthy lives, we are:
- ensuring that all our products are free from artificial colours, flavours and hydrogenated fat
- making healthy food affordable through promotions
- offering healthy ranges including our Healthy Living range
- labelling our products with health information
- using websites, such as www.tesco.com/health and www.tescodiets.com to share important health information with our customers
- opening pharmacies in our stores
- working with others to promote a healthy lifestyle to our customers
- promoting exercise from our ‘Get Healthy with Tesco Lotus’ programme in Thailand through to the UK Tesco Great School Run
- Running Health Days in some international markets. In Hungary this summer, we worked with the Hungarian Red Cross, Coca Cola and Pfizer to organise our first Health Day. The event took place in 14 stores and 600 people donated blood to support the Red Cross
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Guideline Daily Amounts are clearly labelled on our own brand products. They are a guide to the amount of calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt you should try not to exceed every day to have a healthy balanced diet.
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Our labels tell customers how much they will eat in one serving of a product, shown as grams, and the percentage of the guideline daily amount for a typical adult. We believe this provides the most accurate, consistent and factual information for our customers, many of whom have shown that it works by changing their buying habits.
Importantly customers see GDA signposts as transparent and honest as they give them the facts about a food and enable them to compare products within a category or based on their own “rule of thumb” for what is a lot of a nutrient.
The fact that GDA labelling is being adopted by leading manufacturers and retailers across Europe also enables customers to compare directly and easily the nutritional profile of the widest range of products of any labelling system.
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We have three healthy ranges in stores for customers:
The Healthy Living range helps you make the right choices for a healthier diet. The products in the range are tasty and wholesome while limiting fat, saturates, sugar and salt. Each product provides at least two nutritional benefits. Benefits include the product containing minerals, fibre and vitamins.
The Light Choices range is for people who want to keep track of the calories, fat, saturates and sugar which they eat, without having to compromise on taste. It is designed for dieters.
We also have a Wholefoods range, which includes natural foods such as pulses, nuts, cereals, seeds and dried fruit. Tesco Wholefoods are natural products with a minimum amount of processing which means the goodness stays in the food. They’re rich in minerals, nutrients and vitamins and many are low-Gi.
Following the success of the Healthy Living and Light Choices Brands in the UK, we are now rolling out these brands across our international markets.
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Do you have any food ranges for children which are both nutritious and fun?
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Tesco Disney Kids is a nutritious and delicious range that encourages healthier eating. Making good food great fun, the range covers everything from fresh fruit to Mickey shaped pizza.
All products are free from hydrogenated fat, artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners and meet strict limits on fat, sugar and salt. Most importantly of all, every product in the range has passed a Kids' Taste Test with flying colours.
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But shouldn’t more of your products contain less salt, sugar and saturated fat?
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Where we can we have been reducing levels of salt, sugar and saturated fat since 2005 as part of our product improvement programme. Not all foods can be reduced without significantly changing their nature which is why our labelling and information on healthier lifestyles is also important. We also can't change products too quickly - customers have to get used to the changing flavour profiles - but where we can make significant changes we have.
The result is 3,000 tonnes less salt in our products in the UK, including 145 tonnes removed from ready meals. The average Tesco ready meal already contains 10% less salt than the 2010 target set by the FSA.
We have also removed over 2,500 tonnes of saturated fat from products since 2005 through improvements such as using leaner cuts of meat and lower-fat dressings and sauces in our ready meals.
Our product improvement programme is ongoing and includes all products ranges (Value, Standard, Finest) and new product development.
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Customers have told us that they want fewer additives in their food. All our products in the UK are free from benzoate, artificial flavours and artificial colours, with the exception of one shandy which we are still working on.
We have also removed the colours which the FSA advises are linked to hyperactivity in children, including tartazine in mushy peas. We have also gone further than other retailers in using natural flavours in smoked products and replacing synthetics such as vanillin with natural vanilla in all of our chocolate.
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How do you promote healthy options and make them affordable?
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In the UK, every week we run a number of promotions across our produce range to help our customers spend less. We often have around 85 promotions on at any time.
In the US in January we introduced a 98-cent Produce Pack in response to customers looking for fresh fruits and vegetables on a budget. Since then, produce sales have increased by 11%.
In Turkey, this September, we introduced the first private label pasteurised milk. Long-life milk is boiled at highest temperatures to ensure robustness but this heat damages beneficial micro-organisms, vitamins and proteins in milk. To advertise these healthier milk products we are displaying them in different freezers so that they get greater customer attention.
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Are you doing anything to support the health of children in developing countries?
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Through our support for the charity, Mary’s Meals, we are providing nutritious meals to 350,000 of the world’s hungriest school children in 15 developing countries including India, Malawi and Thailand.
Local communities and volunteers take daily responsibility for cooking and serving the meals which encourage children to attend school, educating them and helping to break the cycle of poverty.
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Getting children active has been a key target:
- In June this year, over 1m children from 4,400 primary schools took part in Tesco Great School Run in the UK.
- So far this year in the UK we have given away £3.4 million worth of sports equipment to schools through our Tesco for Schools and Clubs scheme.
- One million children have now taken part in the FA Tesco Skills football coaching programme, in the UK, which provides high quality coaching for boys and girls.
- In South Korea, we have focused on building skills with a nationwide Youth Football Tournament. The tournament promoted health for children and was organised with the MBC Football Foundation that cover 180 leagues and 5,000 children.
We also help to get adults active:
- Last year in the UK, over 730,000 women took part in Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life, including 19,485 Tesco staff.
- In Malaysia more than 6,000 people joined in a Walk for Life in collaboration with the National Cancer Council (MAKNA), last year’s Malaysian Charity of the Year.
- We support Change4Life which encourages people to ‘eat well, move more, live longer’. Earlier this year, in the UK, we had a Get Active promotion on exercise equipment.
- Since the launch of the ‘Get Healthy with Tesco Lotus’ project in 2007 our Thai business has inspired 3.6 million people to join events we support, such as aerobic competitions and football clinics.
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Good health is about more than food and we have helped improve health services available to customers by operating pharmacies and opticians in our stores. Over 70% of our pharmacies are open until 8pm or later, Monday to Saturday and over 90% of our pharmacies are open on Sundays. This offers our customers great accessibility and flexibility.
Our pharmacies also extend access where they operate to the heart of disadvantaged communities such as Hackney in London where 13,000 households without a car are in within a 0.5 km walk of our stores.
Our skilled pharmacists offer a range of health services working with their local Primary Care Trust. More and more customers are using our preventative health checks which includes blood pressure check, glucose screening, weight management and cholesterol check . Following the health check, our customers are given advice about how they can make small changes to live a healthier life. In January and February 2009 we did over 8,000 health checks when we offered them for just £5. We also offer seasonal flu jabs in 200 of our pharmacies across England and Wales.
We offer a stop smoking service where you can visit store and speak to a trained advisor for information about the different products that are available, what is best for you and support on a weekly basis.
We also launched our hayfever and allergy testing this year. We test for allergies to the top 10 allergens carried in the air, such as pollens, house dust mite, cat and dog hair and mould. We can give our customers information about steps that they can take to reduce their symptoms and offer tailored medication advice.
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Our cashiers receive training on the sale of alcohol, supported by a bespoke DVD and training materials. We also use internal channels of communication, including our staff newspaper, to provide cashiers with regular reminders of their responsibilities towards the sale of alcohol. We use mystery shoppers to test whether our cashiers are correctly challenging customers to prove their age.
Other steps that we have taken include:
- Improved bottle labelling
We were the first supermarket to introduce labels showing the units of alcohol in our own-brand alcohol and we are now rolling out the recommended Department of Health alcohol labelling on all our own brand packs, showing the unit measurements, the recommended maximum daily intake and health messages. - More customer information in stores
We have been working for two years on providing customers with information on how to enjoy alcohol responsibly through shelf-edge labels and other signs in stores. - A flexible approach to licensing
We do not apply for licences in areas with known disorder issues and we review existing licences where it appears that late-night alcohol sales are contributing to a drinking problem. - Supporting Community Alcohol partnerships
These partnerships help to reduce under-age drinking and anti-social behaviour which stems from such drinking. Our St Neots store was the leading retailer involved in this project.
- Improved bottle labelling
Creating Good Jobs and Careers
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We operate in 14 markets and employ 470,000 people worldwide. Of that total, 286,394 are employed in the UK.
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Our aim is to treat people how we like to be treated. Our values for the workplace are to:
- Work as a team
- Trust and respect each other
- Listen, support and say thank you
- Share knowledge and experience
- So we can enjoy our work
These values are embedded into the culture of any Tesco store or office.
We have worked hard to create a culture of trust and respect, where managers help their people to do their jobs. We know people work better when they are given the power to make decisions and take responsibility, and we recognise the work they do and say thank you.
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Would there be development and training opportunities if I came to work with you?
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We promise people ‘an opportunity to get on’. As a major employer, when we invest in training and development we also benefit the wider economy. Whether in store or office, everyone will be supported in their career development.
One in 30 of all our staff at Tesco in the UK are on our Options development programme, learning the skills they need to apply for a job at the next work level. In the UK, specialist employees such as fishmongers and bakers can gain recognised qualifications during their careers at Tesco.
To get more information on the careers on offer to you, please visit:http://www.tesco-careers.com
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Yes. We want employees’ views on issues that affect them and the business. We communicate with staff regularly through Store and Distribution Centre Staff Forums, staff question times, face-to-face briefings, publications and our intranet. We also have an annual staff survey, Viewpoint, which is anonymous and confidential. Results get fed into local action plans at store, distribution centre and office level.
We do have a whistle-blowing policy and helpline in place in all the countries we operate within. ‘Protector Line’ is a confidential 24-hour telephone line and e-mail address for employees to report grievances and ethical concerns. All calls are logged and investigated by the appropriate function.
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Employees across the business are free to join unions and we have an industry-leading Partnership Agreement with Usdaw in the UK and with Solidarity in Poland.
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Once people are working for us, we do offer apprenticeship opportunities. In the UK, 848 of our employees have been awarded an Apprenticeship in Retail Skills. The apprenticeship is made up of an NVQ Level 2 in Retail Skills, Key Skills training in numeracy and communication and a technical certificate.
These apprenticeships are store based and equate to five GCSEs at grades A* to C. Of the apprentices who graduated in 2008, 80% said the programme provided them with a career path, and 85% feel they now have more confidence.
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Do you offer yearly placements or summer work experience to undergraduates?
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Unfortunately, we do not currently offer placements. We do have 17 Graduate Programmes though, which give graduates the opportunity to fast-track to leadership positions in a number of business areas. For more information on our UK graduate schemes, please visit: http://www.tesco-graduates.com
We also offer a China Graduate Programme to those fluent in English and Mandarin. These graduates undertake an induction in the China business, then an intensive 6 month development program in the UK after which they return to China to complete their development. We will be accepting applications from March 2010. For more information, please visit: http://www.tesco-graduates.com/home/programmes/international-graduates/china-programme
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In the UK, 207,060 eligible employees received £ 98 million worth of free shares in our Shares in Success scheme in 2009.
Over 97,000 staff save through our Save As You Earn scheme which gives them the option to buy discounted Tesco shares. Over 51,000 staff shared in £175 million when two schemes matured in 2007.
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We have a range of benefits designed to help our staff achieve a home/work life balance. Our flexible options are there for when our colleagues need time off for unexpected events, such as personal or family emergencies. We also have options for those things which take time to plan such as longer holidays or career breaks. We have a large range of contract types to fit in with our staff’s needs and the needs of our business, a couple of examples are part-time flexible contracts and seasonal contracts.
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Everyone is welcome at Tesco and we aim to reflect the communities that we serve at all levels of our organisation.
Our work on Diversity is steered by Diversity Council that consists of Directors from across the business and is chaired by a main board member. Each board member reviews and monitors the diversity of their teams alongside employee engagement levels.
We work to positively attract and develop people who have disabilities. In the UK, for example, we have relationships with disability organisations such as the Employers Forum on Disability, Remploy, Shaw Trust and Whizz-Kidz. We run several in house courses on Diversity including 'Everyone is Welcome at Tesco' which has been attended by 30,000 managers.
In the UK, 57% of Tesco employees are female. Women are also well represented in our development programmes and we have recently been awarded a place on the Times Top 50 'Where Women Want to Work' list.
We have a new network for British Asians at Tesco which has partnered with universities and engaged with Asian parents to improve the perceptions of careers in retail and demonstrate the opportunities Tesco offers. As a result, 20% of applicants to the 2010 Graduate Scheme are British Asian.
In terms of age, people of all ages are welcome at Tesco.
Hot Topics
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To help our customers save money and reduce their food waste, we recently announced that we would be launching a new promotion: 'Buy One Get One Free - Later' on perishable products with short Use By dates such as salad. Customers will be able to pick up their free product when they need it, so they can reduce the amount of food they throw away.
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You have pledged to become a zero-carbon business by 2050. What exactly does that mean?
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It means that the net carbon emissions from the business over a year will be zero, without purchasing carbon offsets. We would achieve zero-carbon by first driving down our energy demand, maximising efficiency in our buildings and vehicles.
Inevitably we would still need some fuel, which will come from the lowest-carbon sources possible – preferably entirely renewable. And then to the extent that our work still has a carbon impact – for example business travel by air – we would seek to balance it out by generating additional zero-carbon energy to supply to others or implementing other carbon mitigation measures beyond our stores.
