Coles has kicked off its second annual Sustainability Week for more than 118,000 team members across Australia.
While sustainability is a key focus across the business throughout the year, the week is aimed at celebrating its recent achievements and further embedding Coles’ new Sustainability Strategy built around the pillars of ‘Together to Zero’ and ‘Better Together’.
More than 2,500 stores and sites across the Coles Group will focus each weekday on a key area of the Sustainability Strategy through team member videos, posters and discussions on how to prioritise sustainable ways of working every day. Topics across the week include:
• Food waste – celebrating 10 years of partnering with food rescue organisation SecondBite, donating the equivalent of more than 144 million meals to people in need.
• Recycling – celebrating 10 years of partnering with soft plastics recycler REDCycle, helping to collect more than 1.5 billion pieces of soft plastic.
• Packaging – highlighting the importance packaging plays in reducing food waste, how to recycle different types of packaging with more than 2,800 Coles Brand products carrying the Australasian Recycling logo, and how Coles is working with industry stakeholders to reduce waste through the Australian Packaging Covenant’s 2025 National Packaging Targets.
• Greenhouse gas emissions – Understanding the recently-announced emissions targets and the role team members can play in helping Coles to achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity by end of FY25, net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to reduce combined Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by more than 75 per cent by the end of FY30 (from a FY20 baseline).
Coles has also introduced dedicated social media channels on the Yammer and Microsoft Teams platforms to encourage company-wide discussion on sustainability issues and provide an opportunity for team members to submit their ideas for the Coles ‘Innovators Fund’ to support new initiatives that will improve sustainability across the business.
“Since launching our new Together to Zero Sustainability Strategy in March, we have continued to see an increase in motivation and focus from our team members in embedding sustainability in their day-to-day activities,” said Thinus Keeve, Coles’ Chief Sustainability, Property and Export Officer.
“We need all team members to be sustainability champions to be able to make a difference and drive change.”