ENVIRONMENT
Our Sustainability Strategy,
can be viewed at www.woolworthslimited.com.au.
As one of Australia’s largest companies, how we manage our operations can have a significant impact on the environment. In November 2007 we launched our Sustainability Strategy 2007–15, identifying our material environmental impacts, setting targets and commitments for improvement, and starting us on the pathway to change.
Our initial focus is on:
- Energy use and climate change.
- Water use and the effect of drought.
- Packaging and waste.
We know this is not an exhaustive list of issues and that our environmental impact and footprint extends well beyond resources directly used to operate our stores and transport goods. However, it is our responsibility to first address our immediate and direct environmental impacts before influencing those of our suppliers. This philosophy has underpinned our boundary determination in focusing on issues we directly control or have significant influence on so we can implement improvements faster and more effectively.
Our total CO2-e emissions have increased from 3.7 Mt in 2006 to 4.3 Mt in 2008. We have implemented some measures and there is a lot more to do. Our greenhouse gas reduction targets are very ambitious and we face many challenges in the day to day implementation, but we remain committed to achieving our targets.
We have completed the implementation of our Water Wise project nationally across 812 stores a year ahead of the target date. An annual water saving of 43.8 ML has been estimated for the 100 stores that were retrofitted in 2006–07.
In 2007–08, we diverted 201 Mt of material from landfill, up from 159 Mt in the previous year.