Supermarket Green Trickery Part Two

Previously in this blog I have discussed how supermarkets use environmental claims to enhance their image whilst in fact what they are doing benefits the supermarket more than the environment and also gives them a nice image with prospective customers.

I have downloaded a policy document from one such supermarket and would like here to address a number of the points.  Don't get me wrong, some of their actions do benefit others more than themselves, but these are mixed in with many that are far from altruistic.

I have written to various people within the organisation concerned but they typically respond either by re-stating the policy document or by claiming I don't understand it correctly (making no attempt to explain it!)

An amusing starting point however is their target of reducing CO2 emissions from business travel.  So far they have INCREASED emissions by 33%!

There are a number of items related to energy production, the first of which suggests generating their own electricity from anaerobic digestion plants - they now find it won't work for them so are rewriting the objective - sounds like politicians to me.  Secondly they talk about on site renewables to generate power - again too hard so the objective is to be revised.

Let's move on to transport, with a couple of interesting ones here.  The first relates to increasing use of bio-diesel.  This has been suspended as, surprise, the production of bio-diesel is not presently sustainable because of the destruction of rain forest or diversion of land from food production in order to grow the crops from which it is produced.  The second is very interesting - converting delivery fleets to cleaner EURO IV and V standard engines by 2012.  This is very easy to achieve as follows:  All large transport fleets regularly replace their vehicles - typically a three or four year life.  They will replace their vehicles with new ones from manufacturers.  Legally new vehicles MUST comply with this legislation.  Ergo the fleet will automatically be upgraded to these standards anyway.

Finally for now, a couple more amusing objectives:

The objective was to label all airfreighted food.  This objective has been achieved.  They proudly announce that sales have not been affected - hence no benefit to anyone or the environment - pointless.

A plan has been stated to install electric charging points at stores to enable people to use so called 'environmentally friendly' electric cars.  They have over seven hundred stores in the UK so how many will get charging points? Five.  Again pointless, but at least when they find that no one uses them there will have been little impact on the environment installing them.

More posts on this topic to come, if I can't get the company themselves to listen to me perhaps a larger audience looking at these claims can have more impact.

Which company?  If you hadn't yet guessed, they claim there is no Plan B and all the documents from which I have derived their claims are freely available from their website.