Welcome

FOOD NEWSLETTERJULY 2015 ISSUE

Welcome to the summer edition of our Foods Plan A newsletter. The first quarter of the financial year has been an exceptionally busy one with the Farming for the Future report, the launch of the new Plan A Report & Global Community Programme Report, Open Farm Sunday, two agricultural shows, and the Plan A and Ethical Trade Conferences in Spain. More than ever, we feel the sense of commitment and excitement towards Plan A growing internally and across our food supply chain. The Foods Conference in April 2015 was a landmark moment demonstrating just how far we’ve come, with sustainability running throughout all sessions and underpinning M&S’ business growth model. It was fantastic to see such interest in our first ever Environment Week, with 140 sites signing up to take part in June to raise awareness for World Environment Day.

Some of the highlights of this edition include:

• Our Foods Plan A Briefing and 2015 Plan A Awards which will take place on Friday 16th October in London – we hope all of our food suppliers can attend.

• Awards and external recognition in honour of our efforts on water management, our Farming for the Future and our Agricultural Leadership Programmes.

• The launch of our new Human Rights policy and Produce Ethical Code of Practice.

On top of this, there are many more articles which we hope you find informative, practical and relevant. This includes a Silver Factories and Attributes updates, the launch of our Workplace Communications programme, and the latest on M&S’ Global Community Programme

which we believe is leading the sector on social innovation in global supply chains.

We are also pleased to welcome contributions from our colleagues in the agricultural teams, Phil Gibson and Andy Mitchell.

Your voices and experience are what will progress us as a community towards our Plan A commitments, so we welcome your thoughts on features or news that you’d like to share in the next edition. Please feel free to get in touch with the team with your ideas.

Wishing you all the best in these warm summer months,

Louise Nicholls FIFST, Head of Responsible Sourcing, Packaging and Plan A

Please do keep in touch with us if you have any suggestions for improving this newsletter and its content or if you would like to be featured as a case study. Email Foods.PlanA@marks-and-spencer.com

Contents

KeY DAtes for Your DiArY

Invitation to Foods Plan A Briefing 1

Kenya and South Africa Conferences 1

Foods Plan A 2015 Awards 1

exCiting PlAn A news

New Plan A Report launched 2

M&S Foods Conference April 2015 2

Awards 3

M&S Farming For The Future shortlisted for prestigious award 3

Celebration of farming at the Balmoral Show 4

silver & beYonD

Silver Factories & Attributes 5

ethiCAl uPDAte

New Human Rights Policy for Supply Chain 6

Tackling Modern Slavery NEW “Stronger Together” Workshops 7

“Let’s Get Talking” 8

Ethical Governance: New Produce Ethical Code of Practice and introducing Alexandra! 9

globAl uPDAtes

Plan A en España! 10

Living Wage in Malawi 10

Global Community Programme 10

other news

Wellbeing Week & Environment Week 11

Clean and Efficient Household Cooking Solutions 12

wAter AnD wAste

Love Food Hate Waste Sustainable Cities – Manchester 13

Welcoming Simon on Water 13

AgriCulture

Select Grower, Field to Fork 14

Milk Pool Celebrations 14

Open Farm Sunday 15

WhatsApp Pilot 15

KEY DATES FOR YOuR DiARY

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Launching KENYA AND SOUTH AFRICAConferences

The Kenya Conference is scheduled to take place in the last week of October and the South Africa Conference will take place in the first week of November. We’ll share more details soon on the dates and how to secure a place.

FOODS PLAN A

2015 AWARDS

Next month we are launching our 2015 Foods Plan A Awards in recognition of the breakthrough initiatives that have taken place amongst our foods suppliers over the past two years, showcasing the best in sustainability leadership.

The categories are:

• Supplier of the year Award

• Environment Award

• People Award

• Innovation Award

• Partnership Award

• Lean Manufacturing Award

We will send you more information about the Awards soon, so please look out for this and start thinking about your submissions! You will be able to share your submissions with the Foods Plan A team from early August until early September. The winners of the Awards will be announced at the Foods Plan A Briefing on Friday 16th October at the Crystal.

INVITATION TO FOODS PLAN A BRIEFING,Friday 16th October 2015

On Friday 16th October, we invite you to join the Foods Plan A Briefing where we will update food suppliers on the Plan A journey and the leadership we are looking for in the coming years to reach ambitious Plan A commitments. We will also announce the winners of our 2015 Foods Plan A Awards. Leading the event will be Director of Foods Technology Paul Willgoss, Director of Plan A Mike Barry, and the Foods Plan A Team including Louise Nicholls. We have chosen the Crystal in the Docklands as the venue for the Foods Plan A Briefing – one of the world’s most sustainable venues. There is limited capacity so we will be hosting a morning session, from 9.30-12.30am, and an afternoon

session, from 13.30-16.30pm. Content and speakers will be the same at both sessions so guests are only required to attend one session.

Please look out for an invitation from Foods.PlanA@marksandspencer.com. The Briefing is geared towards Senior Managers with decision-making responsibilities on sustainability. Each site will be allocated a number of tickets; there is the opportunity to join a waiting list if you’d like more. For group sites, the invitation will be sent to Group Leads to coordinate tickets across your sites.

The Crystal also has an on-site exhibition which showcases global

trends and challenges, alongside existing technological solutions to build environmentally sustainable, livable and prosperous cities. You can also travel to and from the Crystal by the Emirates Air Line, London’s only cable car, which has views that rival the London Eye and we’d thoroughly recommend it!

More details will be included in the invitation. We hope you can make it.

In June 2014, M&S set out on the third stage of our Plan A journey. We launched Plan A 2020, which reflects our determination to put Plan A at the heard of our brand and corporate strategy.

We’re delighted to announce that we’ll be holding Foods Plan A Conferences in Kenya and South Africa later in the year.

We published our 2015 Plan A report on the 4th June. This is the first report that demonstrates progress with Plan A 2020.

Strong progress has been made on Plan A commitments (47 achieved) and our Plan A priorities including rolling Plan A out across M&S’ international business and driving Plan A attributes into our products. M&S remains the only major retailer in the world to have carbon neutral operations.

Key Foods Highlights from this year’s Plan A report:

1. Work Placements. M&S Food Suppliers have provided work placements to over 1718 young people and 90% of those who completed them went on to find work;

2. Almost two thirds (64%) of M&S products now have a Plan A attribute, an eco or ethical quality over and above the market norm, an increase of seven per cent over 13/14;

3. 100% of the palm oil used in M&S products is now covered by Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil

certification; Foods made particularly good progress this year with 93% physical RSPO palm oil;

4. Energy efficiency in our uK and Republic of ireland stores, offices and warehouses has been improved by 36% against a 2007 baseline;

5. £2.45m raised for health and wellbeing charities, including £1.3m for MacMillan Cancer Support and £700,000 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer;

6. Constructed the uK’s largest single roof mounted solar panel array on

top of our Castle Donington distribution centre;

7. Cut the amount of packaging we use for home deliveries by 60% against a 2009 baseline;

8. 100% Of our wild fish is from sources that are sustainable or are working to be sustainable;

9. 32% Of M&S Food comes from suppliers that meet the M&S Silver Sustainable Factory Standard.

The theme of sustainability and using sustainability to underpin profitable growth ran throughout the conference with all speakers mentioning Plan A in some way or other. it was clear to see from the event that those suppliers achieving gold and silver are also those achieving businesses success with Marks & Spencer. Gold Supplier Greencore Northampton achieved overall M&S Supplier of the Year and Cucina Sana were feted with a number of other awards.

Louise Nicholls spoke on some of the key Foods Plan A achievements this year:

• 91% of our food volume covered by the Gold Silver & Bronze programme. 39 sites have now been validated =32% of food volume included in this is now 4 suppliers leading the way at Gold Level, representing 9% of volume.

• Suppliers have reduced water by 8.5 Mm3 and saved 257,787 tonnes waste.

• 48% sites no waste to landfill, in last 12 months sites redistributing has increased by 300%.

• increased labour productivity by 10% to 35%.

• Silver and Gold sites are growing twice as fast with M&S compared to non-silver sites.

• in 14/15 food supply chain enabled 1,718 placements and 925 young unemployed people to gain permanent work.

Louise set some key challenges to Food Suppliers:

• Aim for 100% sites as silver by 2020 – can you get to gold?

• Keep Going on Youth Unemployment.

• Address your Supply Chain Risks.

Suppliers were awarded their gold and silver certificates. The Silver suppliers (top and middle right) are: Vision Park Cake Bolton, 2 Sisters Food Group Thetford, KP Snacks Tanfield, Avanti Blue Panasonic, Worldwide Fruit Spalding, Kims, Dairy Crest Severnside, Fresca Manor Fresh, Wellness Foods Orchard House Factory 3, Bakkavor Desserts, Linden Foods, Tulip Bodmin. The Gold suppliers (bottom right) are: Greencore Northampton, Bakkavor Tilmanstone Salads, Bakkavor Cucina Sano.

To view the new Plan A Foods Film click here. Thanks to stars from Greencore Northampton, Cucina Sano, Manor Fresh, Hovis, Matthew Algie.

ExCiTiNG PLAN A NEWS

M&S FOODS CONFERENCESteve Rowe hosted the M&S Foods Conference on 24th April 2015. This was an exciting event setting the foods strategy for the next year and updating all suppliers on NPD and category plans.

NEW PLAN AREPORT

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ExCiTiNG PLAN A NEWS

AWARDSWe are very proud of the work that we do here in the Foods Plan A team and like to recognise the excellent work you do as suppliers with our annual awards scheme. We also enter our work into a number of awards to gain external recognition. Since the last newsletter we’ve entered and been successful with the following:

Guardian Sustainable Business

Winner Natural Capital Award – For our work on water management within the supply chain.

Runner Up Supply Chain Award – Sustainability Framework and Guardian Sustainable Business Leader of the Year.

2degrees Champions Awards 2015

Finalist Degrees Awards – Silver Framework

Finalist 2 Degrees Award – Work with Matthew Algie & Twin Trading on water stewardship in Peru.

(Both to be announced July 2015).

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M&S FARMING FOR THE FUTURE shortlisted for prestigious awardOur commitment to sustainable farming has recently been recognised, with our Farming for the Future programme and our Agricultural Leadership Programme having both been shortlisted for this year’s Business in the Community Awards.

These awards have been running for 18 years, and were established to highlight responsible business activity and the role companies can play in ensuring a more sustainable future.

The two M&S agricultural programmes have been shortlisted specifically for the ‘Samworth Brothers Rural Action Award’, which recognises the work undertaken by businesses to maintain a sustainable and prosperous rural economy.

As one of the 100 commitments pledged in our Plan A 2020 eco and ethical plan, the M&S Farming for the Future programme certainly reflects the ethos of the awards, having been specifically established to help producers meet current and future sustainability challenges within the agricultural sector.

The programme sees us working with our farmers, growers and fishermen across the globe to help them

identify best practice in terms of efficiency, environmental performance, ethical practice and education, sharing learnings to improve the security of supply and sustainability of our raw materials sourcing.

This desire to ensure the long-term sustainability of the agricultural industry is also reflected in the development of our bespoke Agricultural Leadership programme.

Established in 2012, this programme offers high potential young managers working within the M&S fresh food supply base the chance to attend a customised, five day course at Cranfield university School of Management, aimed at advancing their understanding of sustainability, supply chain management and helping them to develop their own leadership approach.

So far 55 delegates have taken part in the programme, helping to

strengthen relationships throughout the M&S supply chain as well as increasing knowledge and best practice across our supply base.

it is an honour to be nominated for the award and we are delighted that the Farming for the Future programme has been confirmed as a finalist – we look forward to hearing the results on July 7th!

ExCiTiNG PLAN A NEWS

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Celebration of farming at the

BALMORALSHOWWe were delighted to attend the 147th Balmoral show back in May and play our part in the annual, three-day celebration of the agricultural community in Northern Ireland.

Over the course of the event, the M&S agriculture and fisheries team was delighted to meet a large number of producers on the M&S stand - taking time to discuss various topics with visitors whilst they enjoyed the hospitality of the farmer’s lounge. Our customer experience area and chef demonstrations also proved hugely popular with the general public, helping to spread the message about our points of difference in the retail market.

The first day of the show also provided the opportunity to formally announce the winners of this year’s Farming for the Future Awards for the island of ireland. This year the awards were in three categories – outstanding producer, innovation and young producer.

Now in their seventh year, the awards are a celebration of the producers in the M&S supply chain, recognising those who demonstrate industry-leading efficiency, ethical practice, innovation, public engagement or environmental work.

Beef farmer Noel Hooke from Hillsborough, County Down was selected as the winner of the young producer category. He was commended for his drive in implementing new ideas obtained from overseas trips, his dedication to producing high quality cattle and his desire to improve his family business.

Geoff Taylor, New Product Development Project Manager at Monaghan Mushrooms, won the innovation award for his work in developing vitamin D mushrooms for M&S as well as reducing packaging waste and his general enthusiasm for product development.

The winner of the outstanding producer category was arable and beef farmer Alan Mooney from County Kildare. Judges were impressed by his use of clover to boost nitrogen levels in soil, his focus on working with the environment and his involvement within the wider agricultural community.

As always, the Balmoral Show proved to be a fantastic three days engaging with our farmers and growers in ireland and we look forward to meeting more producers when we attend the Royal Highland, Great Yorkshire and Royal Welsh shows in the coming months.

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Silver Factories & Attributes

Silver factoriesWe have had another good quarter on silver validation visits, with some of our large sites achieving Silver and helping to increase our volume from Silver & Gold sites to over 35%. Since the last newsletter we are pleased to report that the following sites have now been validated as Silver:

• Princes Chichester• 2 Sisters Food Group Carlisle• Tangerine Liverpool• G’s March• 2 Sisters Food Group Rogerstone

We have a number of other sites in the diary for Silver validations over the summer and plenty of opportunities for sites to add their names to the list of visits before the end of the financial year, so if you believe you are ready for a silver validation visit, please contact Joanne.Bowen@marksandspencer.com and we will arrange to get some calls in the diary to begin the Silver process.

As a reminder, all the information you require to help you on your way to Silver, and that you will need to prepare for a silver validation visit, can be found on the Supplier Exchange website. Silver factory cohortsDespite the progress happening on Silver, not all of our sites are progressing fast enough on the framework for us to meet our commitment of all sites achieving Silver status by 2020. To help speed up this process, we are investigating the option of running a number of cohorts within the supply base, whereby sites at similar levels on the scorecards can share best practice with other sites and help each other to progress to Silver. Cohorts would meet regularly to share progress in the various frameworks and on the process overall. The idea is that sites exchange their planning for reality checks, help review each other’s gap analyses, share ideas for implementation of the framework in specific projects etc.

More information will be shared soon, but the Plan A team may be in contact with you to invite you to become a member of a cohort to help both M&S and the supply base achieve their future silver & gold targets. Attributes

The overall foods figure for the full year 2014/15 was 63%. This is 7% up on last year and 13% ahead of our 2015 target, so well done to everybody who has helped us achieve that figure.

However, we still have a long way to go, especially in some categories, and need to really drive product attributes and hotspots harder and faster this year. Through the silver process, we are identifying the sites that will help us make the biggest improvements in attribute numbers by category, as well as identifying the specific hotspots that will drive numbers forwards by targeting sustainable raw materials, packaging and reduced waste. The Attribute Guidelines document has recently been updated to Version 7. This has updated attributes, names, rules & M&S owners and can be accessed on Connect & Supplier Exchange.

in addition, any proposed new attributes should be discussed the quarterly food attribute board meeting (the next one is 13th July) so if any sites have any new attributes that the feel should qualify, please contact Joanne.Bowen@marksandspencer.com as well as your category team, and we will discuss the next steps.

SiLVER & BEYOND

When 2 Sisters Carlisle were validated silver, they celebrated in style! All colleagues were invited to the market stalls used on the validation day where they received a recyclable jute bag containing the silver mug with the C&G and Plan A logos on, along with a celebration cake. There was also some information outlining what they have achieved through silver validation and why it’s important. Everyone had the opportunity to enter a prize draw to win 1 of 50 electrical items ranging from a flat screen TV to kettles and toasters and everything in between and 50 1 day extra holidays. 100 Prizes in total. This happy worker won the kindle!

In 2011, the UN published the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This made clear businesses responsibility to uphold human rights in their operations and supply chains. It set out how businesses should seek to identify their most material human rights impacts, and set out an action plan to address these impacts.

We believe that human rights represent a ‘widening of the lens’ for our ethical trade activity – thinking beyond the first tier of the supply chain and beyond the immediate workplace. it also requires us to have in place a stronger approach to grievances.

As such, we have announced that we will be launching a new Human Rights policy for the supply chain, which will be posted online shortly. The policy should be read alongside our Global Sourcing Principles, which were updated in December 2014. The policy emphasises:• The importance of the Global

Sourcing Principles• The importance of external

collaborations• Commitment to extra due

diligence in order to address human rights impacts

• Ensuring effective remedy for grievances in our supply chains

What is effective remedy?Remedy refers to the ability of people whose rights have been compromised, to seek a solution to address and improve that impact. What do we think effective remedy looks like for a supplier?• Building awareness of

employees and knowledge of employee on their human rights and labour rights

• Encourage employees to speak up, without retribution, about any concerns they may have, including through grievance channels

• increasing the capacity of management to effectively identify and respond to concerns

• Promote the provision of both informal and formal grievance mechanisms

M&S signs up to the UN Women’s Empowerment PrinciplesWe are delighted to announce that M&S has signed up to the Women’s Empowerment Principles. As such we are stating our commitment to empowering women to participate fully in economic life across all sectors – this is essential to build stronger economies, achieve internationally agreed goals for development and sustainability, and improve the quality of life for women, men, families and communities.

M&S have a strong employee diversity programme in place – including targets on the proportion of women on the Board and in senior roles; an inspiring Women Network; and a number of gender diversity initiatives, including mentoring young women at local schools. We recognise that by stating our commitment publically to the Women’s Empowerment Principles we can further reinforce this strength, and demonstrate our leadership externally.

So what are The Women’s Empowerment Principles? in short they offer practical guidance to business and the private sector on how to empower women in the workplace, marketplace and community. The Principles are designed to support companies in reviewing existing policies and practices – or establishing new ones – to realise women’s empowerment.The Principles are:1. Establish high-level corporate

leadership for gender equality2. Treat all women and men fairly at

work – respect and support human rights and nondiscrimination

3. Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers

4. Promote education, training and professional development for women

5. implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women

6. Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy

7. Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality

You can find out more online at http://weprinciples.org/

NEW HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY for Supply Chain

ETHiCAL uPDATE

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ETHiCAL uPDATE

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The new Modern Slavery Act requires all big businesses in the UK to make a public annual statement of the steps taken to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in its business or supply chain.

M&S is a sponsor of the “Stronger Together” initiative to equip businesses with the knowledge and resources to prevent and tackle modern slavery at their sites and in their supply chain.

We strongly encourage all our supplier sites to book onto a workshop below (with worker representatives if you so wish). Please also ask your labour provider to attend a workshop if they have yet to do so.

For further details and to book a place on the workshops, please visit www.stronger2gether.org/events

if you have already attended a workshop please demonstrate that you have implemented the good practice by becoming a Stronger Together Business Partner – go to http://stronger2gether.org/business-partners/ and follow the instructions to upload your evidence. You may then download and use the Stronger Together Business Partner logo.

“Stronger Together” workshops coming up

Tackling Modern Slavery NEW “Stronger Together” Workshops

For more information: Please email info@stronger2gether.org or call 01276 919090.

3 July 2015 Sainsburys, 33 Holborn, London EC1N 2HT

16th September 2015 Sainsburys, unit 1 Draken Drive, Ansty Park, Coventry, CV7 9RD

29th September 2015 Morrisons, Haldens Parkway, Thrapston, Kettering, Northamptonshire, NN14 4QS

21st October 2015 Bakkavor Ltd, West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB

One of the challenges sites often speak to the Foods Plan A Team about is how to achieve successful communication channels between Managers and Workers. In response to this, we have launched a new Workplace Communication Programme (WPC) to support better communication and representation at sites. We are asking all sites to introduce Workplace Communication including having either an effective Trade Union or Worker Committee in place in the next 3-6 months.

The WPC programme is not an alternative to union representation, but a programme to introduce internal mechanisms to give your workers a voice in a number of ways – this could include setting up a Worker Committee, especially if a Trade union isn’t in place.

We have pulled together existing good practice from sites with both Worker Committees and Trade unions and consulted with additional experts to develop a flagship WPC Resource Pack which will provide you with everything you need to champion improved WPC at your site.

The WPC Programme is especially geared towards sites who don’t currently have a Trade union or Worker Committee in place yet; but the resources will be of value to all sites committed to improving WPC.

Why focus on Workplace Communication?There is clear independent evidence that links WPC and effective worker representation to business performance, productivity and profitability.

By giving your employees a voice and regarding them as part of the solution to the challenges you face, management will arrive at better

decisions that improve day-to-day operations. You will be better able to respect worker rights and meet the needs of the workforce. if your employees are listened to, they also likely to protect the quality of your food and to stay with you for longer.

We expect all sites supplying M&S to have workplace representation in place, at least at a basic level. A Trade union or an effective Worker Committee is also key requirement for Silver validation with M&S – a compulsory standard for all our food suppliers by March 2020. Gold sites must provide evidence of collective bargaining (on pay and conditions) and mature industrial relations.

What support is on offer?You can download the WPC Resource Pack on Dropbox or the Supplier Exchange.

The WPC Resource Pack includes:1. WPC Training guides to WPC for

a Project Manager, Manager and Worker

2. WPC PowerPoint presentations to help you to promote WPC across your business

3. +20 templates for you to customise and download

4. WPC posters for you to promote WPC at your site.

The Foods Plan A Team is also planning to hold online WPC workshops as an opportunity for you to ask questions and to discuss ideas with other sites. if you’re interested in taking part in these, please email foods.plana@marksandspencer.com

Don’t forget we have developed a toolkit which demonstrates how HR teams can be getting more involved with the accelerating progress on lean. The HR functions has a vital and critical role in driving lean, so make sure your teams are reading the toolkit to understand more. You will be able to access the Toolkit on the Supplier Exchange.

“Let’s Get Talking”

LEAN FOR HR TOOLKIT

ETHiCAL uPDATE

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ETHiCAL uPDATE

ETHICAL GOVERNANCE: New Produce Ethical Code of Practice and introducing Alexandra!

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In our last newsletter we updated suppliers on important changes to the Ethical Code of Practice and ethical audit requirements. We are now well underway with on-boarding our A list onto Sedex, and ensuring ethical audits are in place.

if you haven’t already, make sure you are familiar with these changes to the Ethical COP, which is available on Connect. Remember:• All audits must be semi-announced

and with M&S approved auditors• You must inform us of your audit

date in advance via sedex@marksandspencer.com – we will contact you 6 months from your due date

• Audits must be visible to M&S on Sedex within 5-10 working days of the audit taking place – you must manage your audit body to achieve this.

in addition, we have now launched a new Produce Ethical Code of Practice, which applies to basic produce suppliers. This makes really clear the expectations of our direct produce suppliers to be managing ethical standards within their international grower and packer supply base. We strongly encourage all produce suppliers to access this new Code of Practice as soon as possible, via Connect.

We are pleased to introduce Alexandra Kiseleva (also known as Sasha), who has been with us for six months, on secondment from Sedex. Sasha works three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday) in the M&S Plan A team, particularly helping suppliers with Sedex and ethical audit. When she is not at M&S Sasha works on the Sedex helpdesk, so she is a great point of call for any of your Sedex queries. She is fluent in English and Russian, and has just started learning Chinese!

We have published M&S guidance on zero hours, working hours and overtime premiums on Connect. This guidance was developed in conjunction with suppliers in the M&S Ethical Exchange group, and sets out guidance for suppliers in managing these complex areas.

if you would like to discuss any elements of the guidance, please get in touch with helen.mctaggart@marksandspencer.com

GLOBAL uPDATES

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In early June, members of the M&S Plan A team and Produce category travelled to Spain to update suppliers on our Plan A activity. The update, held in Murcia, was attended by over 80 suppliers, across products including salads, stone fruit, soft fruit, veg and wine.

One of the new key Plan A commitments in 2014 was to launch a Global Community Programme to benefit people in the key regions of the world where M&S products are sourced by 2020.

increasing the scale of existing activities and launching new social and environmental initiatives to strengthen the resilience of communities and security of supply by 2020. We’ve done lots of work on this in the last year and because there has been so much progress and so many great stories we’ve produced a separate guide to the Global Community Programme. The Guide contains 13 different Case Studies of Key programmes such as Emerging Leaders, the Farmers Education Prorgamme & Work on Fishing in the uK and also much more detail on the thinking behind the Global Community Programme Strategy.

The report can be downloaded here.

The team also took the opportunity to visit Spanish sites in three different regions, to understand how our suppliers are implementing best practice across ethical and environment.

M&S also came together with Sainsburys, Tesco, Co-op and Waitrose to host to multi-retailer ethical trade forums in Seville and Murcia. These events were attended by approximately 200 delegates and aimed to raise awareness on ethical trade, and create supplier-owned forums.

M&S is pleased to announce that we have joined a coalition of 20 businesses in the tea industry on a project addressing living wages and living incomes for tea workers and smallholders in the Malawi tea industry.

The programme – called ‘Malawi Tea 2020 Revitalization Programme’ – has members representing producers, buyers, retailers, certification bodies, NGOs and others and aims to look holistically at measures to improve incomes.

PLAN A en España!

GLOBAL COMMUNITY PROGRAMME

LIVING WAGE in Malawi

OTHER NEWS

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WELLBEING WEEK & ENVIRONMENT WEEK In February 2015, M&S launched the Wellbeing Week Toolkit and campaign. We are pleased that 90% of surveyed sites said that Well-being Week had a positive impact on its staff. Building on this success, we recently launched our first Environment Week in June.

M&S ran a Wellbeing Week Campaign to create awareness of the new Toolkit and to encourage suppliers to run Wellbeing Week in March and throughout the year. 25 different businesses across 61 sites signed up to run Wellbeing Week representing a more than 40% increase in the number of sites who ran Healthy and/or Money Week in 2014. More than 25,000 workers are employed across the 60 sites that have run or are running Wellbeing Week and on average half of the employee engaged in the week.

Almost 80% of the sites surveyed featured activities around Nutrition and Hydration and Physical Health and Fitness. A large proportion of sites also focused on Mental Health and Mindfulness (71%). As with the previous campaign, suppliers found it easier to engage employees in physical and nutrition related topics rather than financial topics but encouragingly, half of all suppliers did focus on the topic of Savings, Pensions and Financial Management.

9 in 10 suppliers surveyed said that Wellbeing Week has had a positive impact on their employees’ confidence to make decisions about their wellbeing.

All suppliers believed that the initiative also had a positive impact on their employees’ knowledge of wellbeing issues.

Encouragingly, 100% of suppliers surveyed also believed that Wellbeing Week gave their employees the skills to take action to improve their health and wellbeing. 42% of these believed that the skills employees gained during the Week would have a medium to long-term impact on their ability to take action on health topics.

Building on our successes, Foods Plan A decided to trial an Environment Week in June – an easy to deliver campaign to help workers think about the choices they make in relation to the environment, including waste, consumption, and water and energy use. We developed a set of new Toolkits to give sites everything needed to deliver a fun, engaging and impactful Environment Week. They are still available on the Supplier Exchange website.

Almost 140 sites signed up in total demonstrating unprecedented levels of interest. Some sites delivered their Environment Weeks starting on 5th June, in line with World Environment Day, but a number of sites are still going. A whole range of activities have been delivered reflecting sites’ creativity and enthusiasm for doing Environment Week in a way that is useful to them. This includes free energy checks in the home, a 10,000 Step Challenge, Meat Free Monday, shared car rides to work, Cycle to Work club, a pedal powered smoothie maker - to name just a few! We look forward to sharing more details at the Environment Exchange including the winners of our competition!

if you haven’t yet run an Environment Week and you’d like to, please email Foods.PlanA@marks-and-spencer.com

During their Environment Week, Fletcher’s Bakery were visited by South Yorkshire Energy Centre who provided lots of information on how to beat fuel poverty.

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OTHER NEWS

Clean and efficient household cooking solutionsThe use of open fires and traditional cookstoves and fuels is one of the world’s most pressing health and environmental problems. Globally, three billion people rely on solid fuels to cook, causing serious environmental and health impacts that disproportionally affect women and children.

According to the World Health Organization, unsafe cooking conditions are the fourth greatest threat to health in developing countries, claiming twice as many lives each year as malaria. Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels and more than 50% of premature deaths among children under 5 are due to pneumonia caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.

Yet, safe, affordable, and accessible clean cooking solutions exist that can dramatically reduce fuel consumption and exposure to harmful cookstove smoke, while providing economic opportunities in communities around the world.

Clean cooking and energy access is critical to sustainable development, gender equality and the environment. We estimate 500,000 women working in the M&S supply chain alone could have their lives enhanced through access to cleaner cookstoves which would also rapidly reduce carbon emissions. Marks and Spencer has been working with The Carbon Neutral Company and uNiCEF to deliver clean cook stoves to 40,000 households in Bangladesh, a significant country within our clothing supply chain. This will enable 200,000 individuals to benefit from improved indoor air quality and a reduction in health related issues as well as generating carbon reduction benefits. We believe clean cookstoves are one of the very few interventions that can be adopted at scale and address multiple issues, delivering co-benefits for women and children, health and climate change.

Following the success in Bangladesh, we want to better understand how workers in our food supply chain currently use cookstoves in their everyday lives and would like to assess the potential opportunity around using cleaner cookstoves in improving the health of workers. Countries with high potential that have been identified include Kenya, Ghana, uganda and Ethiopia.

We have created a short survey and we would appreciate it if you could complete the survey by the end of July or us better understand the current position in your supply chain. Please click here.

For a beginners guide explaining what cookstoves are, the problem and the solution, please click here for a 3 minute video.

WATER AND WASTE

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LOVE FOOD HATE WASTE SUSTAINABLE CITIES –

MANCHESTER

Simon Reid joined the team as Sustainability Manager in May to provide a focus for our activities on water over the next 12 months. Simon’s key role will be to identify key water-related risks and hotspots in our food supply chain and then work with others to do something about it!

Please get in touch: simon.reid@marksandspencer.com

WELCOMING SIMON ON WATER

Call out to Manchester Suppliers/Organisations• Come along and see us on 22nd

August• Run a little lunch on site or encourage

employees to run their own• Promote LFHW messaging• Donate surplus products for our

salad and smoothie making

We want to use surplus product where we can or product that is not at its premium. if as suppliers you may have fruit and veg (for smoothies/salads) please get in touch to discuss.

Anyone who wants more information or is based in Manchester and wants to get involved please contact Charlotte – charlotte.jackson@marks-and-spencer.com

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AGRiCuLTuRE

SELECT GROWER Field to ForkThe new version of Field to Fork, now called Select Grower, from Field to Fork, was released in January. There were many changes to the format from Version 4, a slimming down, and focus on the question matter was one.

We moved from a general audit covering many areas to an audit that focussed in on the food safety of product while still covering the ethical, sustainability and environmental areas but using our Codes of practice and standards. This new standard has been well received and the changes to the reporting system on the Muddy boots platform means you can do the audit on a tablet at that time and attach photos during the audit.

One of the big changes is the inclusion of the supplier approval

system, this is a key step-change for us and our suppliers as this is where we map the supply chains of our produce going in to our many products, it is a simple but effective way to go from the grower to M&S, while also managing all your due diligence needs of the supplier. i feel and hope that this system will be a key tool for our suppliers in the future to help understand and manage the supply chain. it has already proved a very effective tool as the issue in Spanish labour meant we had to quickly search our supply base for exposure to this issue and

the information was found in a very short time, which gave us the ability to understand our risk.

Since this we have asked all our in scope suppliers to build their supply chains on the Supplier approval system by the end of Quarter 1 which is the end of June. i would ask that any suppliers in scope that feel that they cannot reach this key target to discuss with their Technologist. This is a real key tool to manage and understand the risk and the supply chain and means that we can all focus on our potential exposure.

Andy Mitchell, Agronomist

The Farming for the Future Report

was launched in April 2015.

Click here

MILK POOL CELEBRATIONS

To celebrate this milestone, a special lunch was held in Copthorne, West Sussex on 4th June to celebrate the achievements of the pool, which sees 35 specially selected and audited farms provide all the fresh, café and flavoured milk for M&S stores.

Established in the summer of 2000, the milk pool has evolved since then to include a transparent, cost of production-based pricing approach, ensuring that our farmers get a fair

price for their milk, which gives them the confidence to invest for the future. The pool has also developed unique health and welfare and farm standards, ensuring that our milk comes from the very best farms, which in turn have the healthiest and most comfortable cows.

What’s more, in 2011 we launched ‘better for you’ milk, which was developed collaboratively with our farmers and which delivers reduced saturated fat content in the milk.

Commenting on the anniversary, milk pool farmer chairman, Mark Robins, said: “Working alongside M&S and fellow producers for the last 15 years, the milk pool has lead the industry in health, welfare and farm standards. Through the hard work of everyone involved we have developed an approach based on trust and mutual respect, helping establish a strong relationship between retailer and producers and security for all parties. it is something that we really treasure.”

The M&S milk pool is widely recognised as being industry-leading and 2015 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the establishment of a dedicated producer group for M&S fresh liquid milk.

AGRiCuLTuRE

WhatsApp pilotFoods Plan A and Farming for the Future team decided to trial a WhatsApp pilot for Open Farm Sunday to see if mobile technology can improve communications with farmers.

The Farming for the Future Team has until now communicated with farmers and growers mostly by email. This is time-consuming and there’s often a low response rates as farmers are not based desk-based and are too busy to respond to email. However, the Farming for the Future Team and farmers do use their mobiles a lot.

in the run-up to Open Farm Sunday, we decided to test whether we could use WhatsApp to:

• Provide Growers with practical information to get them ready for the event

• Create stronger connections between M&S and its farmers

• Foster a stronger community spirit amongst the farmers

How we went about itWe set up an Open Farm Sunday WhatsApp group and invited all the

Farmers taking part in Open Farm Sunday to join. Some of the Farmers were new to WhatsApp which meant they had to download the app onto their mobiles, which is very easy to do. Once 100% of the farmers had joined the group, the Farming for Future Team started to use the WhatsApp as the main communication channel with farmers.

Results The pilot was a great success. in the week preceding Open Farm Sunday around 80 messages were shared between M&S Farming for the Future team and the farmers. Since people have their mobiles with them at all times, the live communication helped M&S to trouble-shoot problems quickly and to ensure farmers had everything they needed to run a successful Open Farm Sunday. Farmers also shared photos of activities happening at their sites and encouraging messages to each other.

We were so pleased with how the pilot went that we are now looking to roll-out the use of WhatsApp to our wider growing community and across parts of the supply base.

if you’d like to request an infosheet on the pilot or to discuss how WhatsApp could help you, please contact rebecca.dove@marksandspencer.com

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OPEN FARM SUNDAYThe tenth anniversary of the largest free event in the farming industry took place in June and enjoyed a record-breaking turnout and sunshine! M&S is very proud of the 14 farmers and growers we supported to take part.

On Sunday 7th June, Open Farm Sunday enjoyed a record-breaking day with a quarter of a million visitors to almost 400 sunny farms. Open Farm Sunday is an event that gets our farmers and growers to open up their gates so the general public can come in and see what goes on in this very important part our supply base. it was first conceived by LEAF a charity that is very active in the support of the environment and farming and from its humble beginnings in 2005 to what it is now.

Annabel Shackleton, Open Farm Sunday manager at LEAF said: “Our tenth Open

Farm Sunday has been a resounding success and a fantastic celebration of British farming and food. From the feedback received so far, it’s clear that Open Farm Sunday has enabled hundreds of thousands of people to have an amazing day in the countryside, learning about farming and the story behind their food.”

M&S have been a principal sponsor of this event for this ten years, and we have been very active in our support this year working with 14 key farmers and growers to help support the event by sponsoring there refreshment stalls,

giving them articles to auction for charity, and many items to show our strong connections with our farming base. Open Farm Sunday is a farming event to really show how amazing the industry is; it is the chance for the public to take a glimpse of this robust and resilient industry and the positive impacts that our growers have on the local communities, environment and the work they do to ensure that the countryside is managed for all future generations.

Open Farm Sunday 2016 will be on Sunday 5th June so please put the date in your diary now!