Cut the hype, Sainsbury’s chief wants some smarter shopping

Tricia Holly Davis

IF there’s one thing that infuriates Justin King, the Sainsbury’s chief executive, it’s green hype. “The environmental agenda has been hijacked by vested interests,” he complains.
King, who has run the supermarket chain for five years, is known for passionate tirades but plastic bags, food miles and carbon labels are his pet subject. “People bang on about the number of plastic bags, but that totally misses the point. What’s important is the environmental impact of the bags, not how many bags you have.”
The same goes for carbon labelling. “Why would I put a picture of an aircraft on a package of strawberries? If my customer reads on a package that the strawberries came from the US, it’s pretty obvious to them that the strawberries got here by plane.”
Counting food miles is also a waste of time in the grand scheme of the environment, according to King. “Food miles have become iconic but, if you focus on them, you completely miss the point.

The much bigger sustainability issue for supermarkets is how much food is wasted.”
In a speech tomorrow at London’s Imagination Gallery, King will urge supermarkets to focus on helping consumers to waste less food through smarter shopping and cooking. He will also outline plans to reduce Sainsbury’s own waste as part of a goal to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per square metre of retail space by 25% by 2012.
Sainsbury’s corporate responsibility report, published tomorrow, sets targets to connect all stores and depots to a zero food waste-to-landfill programme by the end of this year. Operational waste will cease to go to landfill at the end of next year. Sainsbury’s will also reduce its own-brand packaging weight relative to sales by a third over the next six years.
King will update Sainsbury’s shareholders on the year-end results at the annual meeting later this week. “It’s not a coincidence we publish our annual accounts and corporate responsibility report in the same week. Sustainability is as much about economics as it is about environment.”
So far, this approach has worked well for the shareholders. A year ago there was speculation that Sainsbury’s middle-class image might be it’s undoing in a recession. “Everyone thought consumers would go on this headlong rush to buy food as cheaply as they could and we would lose out, but that didn’t happen,” King says. “Yes, people are buying cheaper food, but they want value.”
He believes much discussion about the environmental impact of supermarkets is ill-informed. “People talk about importing less food as if that’s some sort of environmental panacea. It’s not. First, if you turn the environmental issue into one where people have to give up things that are important in their lives, they’re very unlikely to accept it.
“Second, it’s morally indefensible to say we won’t trade with Africa because all of a sudden we think that’s the best way to solve an environmental problem, a problem we created. What’s important is to make sure the food you are importing is grown and transported in a sustainable way to the markets where consumers will pay the most for them.”
Take green beans, for example. “There’s a lot of talk about green beans being topped and tailed in Africa and how bad that is, but it makes sense. Why would you fly the whole beans all the way here from Africa just so British consumers can top and tail them in their own kitchen and throw them away here, creating more waste?
“Do it in Africa, where labour is cheaper and you’re giving someone a job. Then, as retailers, you use only the best products that attract the highest price in the UK and create little or no waste. We can’t let pictures of piles of beans in a farm deflect us from that point.”
Politicians also need to stop getting caught up in the green hype, he says. “It’s often proposed that plastic bags should be taxed, but taxes aren’t the answer. It’s much better to give businesses an incentive to use recycled plastic bags. If I have to pay a tax whether I use recycled plastic bags or not, then why would I bother paying more for recyclable materials?
“Too often, the government’s proposals are a shoot-from-the-hip type of legislation. You can’t assume all companies start from the same place, because many have invested in sustainability for a long time — long before it was on the government’s agenda.”