Environment

With much of our business dependent on the tropics, it’s essential that our environmental approach spans the globe. In our tea and coffee supply chain we work with certification partners, such as the Rainforest Alliance, to help improve environmental standards, and at an industry level we’re championing climate change adaptation techniques, ensuring farmers are better placed to face the effects of global warming.

Within our business operations we continually strive to reduce our environmental impact, with Our Planet Targets in place to cut our energy and water use, and waste levels. At our Branches, environment teams or champions promote good practice and inspire and engage our people.

We also work with schools, community groups and social enterprises to turn ‘trash into treasure’ at the Cone Exchange, our very own community recycling facility. And, thanks to our long term Trees for Life campaign, our customers have helped us plant over 5 million trees worldwide and protect an area of rainforest the size of the Yorkshire Dales.

Our commitment to carbon neutrality builds on our long history of reducing our environmental impact and supporting environmental protection – and we hold CarbonNeutral® certification for both our company and our tea and coffee products. This recognises that we’re robustly measuring the environmental impact of our business and products, reducing it as much as possible, and then balancing the emissions we can’t avoid by funding initiatives that absorb carbon or reduce carbon emissions. We’ve worked to ensure that this ‘offsetting’ is bringing direct and positive impacts for communities within our tea and coffee supply chain.