Message from our Sustainability Leadership
Message from our Sustainability Leadership
As Bill McEwan mentions in his update, we are making steady progress in quantified reduction of our environmental footprint and in activating ownership of sustainability across our business functions and operating units. Both are works in progress but we are encouraged by the results that have been achieved since the launch of our first sustainability report.
At that time, I highlighted some key challenges that we, like other businesses, face as we evolve our sustainability strategy. These are my thoughts on several of them now:
Integration – Some business functions will always lead others when it comes to implementing solutions for any business challenge; such is true for sustainability. We have tremendous opportunities to accelerate and accentuate the sharing of best practices so the results achieved by one can be adopted as standard operation procedure.
Measurement – Systems have been established to efficiently extract needed data from invoices that we were already processing, such as kilowatt hours off store electricity bills. This information is now made visible company-wide through a new web-based tracking tool and we use this functionality to target where the best practice "wins" exist and what pilots should be applied on a broader scale for maximum impact.
Education – Of course, it is not enough to just provide the motivation and information to employees to help them progress further on sustainability. It needs to be made more "tangible" through quantified results from best practices, tools, resources and with a guiding direction endorsed by senior leadership. All these elements are vital to the progress we are making on sustainability.
Collaboration – Business is very good at achieving results when they are measurable, as the adage "what gets measured gets done" attests. Significant, broad-based reductions will be achieved when the business systems for sustainability are developed and a foundation is created to enable sustainability to become "business as usual". Sobeys actively participates in and endorses a number of important Canadian and global initiatives including the Global Packaging Project, The Global Social Compliance Program and The Consumer Goods Forum's initiatives on deforestation and refrigerants.
We have shared some insight into the challenges specific to improving sustainability for seafood and for packaging in the respective sections of this website. And, a great example in the Retail Stores section of reducing GHG emissions by switching to natural refrigerants as demonstrated in the case study outlining the Québec region's industry-leading work in this area.
In closing, we make clear our intention for reporting on our sustainability progress. A sustainability review will be released every year with the next one due in September 2012, aligned with our organization's fiscal year reporting.
David Smith
Vice President
Retail Strategy and Sustainability
