How green is your supermarket?
Some UK supermarkets are greening up their act and doing more to help customers shop green but others are lagging well behind according to new mystery shopping exercise by Consumer Focus on whose Board I sit.
The UK’s top nine supermarket chains were ranked on sustainability measures such as availability of UK in-season fruit and vegetables, organics, higher welfare meat and eggs and sustainably sourced fish. The survey looked not just at availability in the store but also how clearly these products were displayed and promoted to consumers in-store.
The exercise found that the gap between the best and worst performing supermarkets has got wider since the first survey in 2006. Sainsbury’s and M&S made the biggest leap by achieving the first ever overall “A” (excellent) score. They were followed by Waitrose, which retained a “B” grade. Other supermarkets such as Morrisons showed improvement over the course of the surveys; Tesco showed no progress since 2007 and Asda moved down the ratings.
The survey also found some good green practices among the high street chains. The discounters Aldi and Lidl, surveyed for the first time, were the only two supermarkets to have closed doors on all freezers, thereby helping to conserve energy. The co-op was found to be selling the highest proportion of fairly traded products among its own brand products than any of its rivals.