Marks & Spencer - Sustainable procurement delivering quantifiable business benefits

"Since we launched our eco plan, "Plan A" in 2007, we've reduced our environmental impact, developed new sustainable products and services, helped improve the lives of people in our local communities and saved around £50 million by being more efficient." Sir Stuart Rose, Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer took a very systematic and pragmatic approach to delivering sustainability through their supply chain and they continue to do so. Plan A contains 100 action points (recently increased to 160), not all of which apply to all product categories. It was necessary first of all to prioritise and screen out those items that do not apply to the direct or indirect supply chain, then to identify priorities by individual product category. This gave rise to a clearly prioritised plan for each product category which may only contain 4 or 5 Plan A objectives that are really relevant to the category.

Plan A objectives linking specifically to sustainable procurement include:

• M&S will do this by determining and agreeing a fair, living wage before implementing a process to ensure their clothing suppliers pay this wage to their workers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. Based on their successful pilot in Bangladesh, they will achieve this by working with their suppliers to improve productivity and management practices;
• Working with M&S suppliers to provide training and education programmes - including in basic healthcare and workers' rights - for 500,000 workers in their factories;
• Helping their suppliers create 200 'Plan A' factories with either ethical or environmental features, or both, and encouraging 10,000 farmers who produce fresh foods to join their sustainable agriculture programme;
• Sourcing all cardboard for M&S food packaging via a single 'model' forest programme;
• Becoming the first major retailer to ensure full traceability of all the key raw materials used in their clothing and home products including cotton, wool, polyester, nylon, leather and wood;
• Becoming the first major retailer to ensure that six key raw materials we use - palm oil, soya, cocoa, beef, leather, coffee - come from sustainable sources that do not contribute to deforestation, one of the biggest causes of climate change.

This helps procurement managers to make clear decisions, particularly when being mobbed by potential suppliers with "eco-bling" to sell. The prioritised objectives enable buyers to provide clear requirements to suppliers and to make decisions based on the suppliers prioritised contribution to Plan A, not to support general green claims that often amount to nothing.

Using the Flexible Framework, Marks and Spencer has implemented a systematic programme of training, measurement and process changes to ensure that the change in behaviour is embedded in the longer term.

Going forward, the company is supporting the CIRIA guide to sustainable procurement in construction, based on the forthcoming BS 8903 standard for sustainable procurement. This will ensure that consistent practice is adopted through the supply chain in future.

Action Sustainability is proud to have supported M&S through this programme of work and to be working with them in drafting the new BSI and CIRIA standards.

Shaun McCarthy
May 2010