Asda blasts ranking in green watchdog’s sustainability report

Watchdog Consumer Focus’s ‘Green to the Core?’ report rated Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s as the greenest supermarkets in its mystery shopper test, with both achieving an A grade.

Morrisons improved as well, while Tesco remained the same. Asda, on the other hand was downgraded to D, putting it in the same category as Lidl and Aldi.

Asda head of sustainability Julian Walker Palin hit back and said the report was “not worth the recycled paper it’s written on”. “It’s inaccurate and misleading – and we can prove it,” he said.

In a comment on his blog, Walker Palin continued: “In this report they have walked around one of our shops then made sweeping statements on our overall corporate policy. Imagine if I visited one school then stated that all schools in the UK are bad – that wouldn’t be fair but that is in effect what they have done here.”

He said the report failed to take into account the retailer’s work on reducing bag uses and packaging. “We have already reduced our packaging by a massive 27% since 2006 – Tesco has a 15% aspiration by 2010 and the Co-op

The report ranked supermarkets on areas such as purchasing food from UK suppliers, display and promotion of products and work to encourage recycling. The research was carried out in July and the retailers graded on an A to E scale.

The survey compared the recycled content and FSC-certified content of packaging for own-brand cereal, toilet paper and kitchen towels.

Aldi had the highest proportion of recycled content, closely followed by Sainsbury’s. Two out of 45 Asda cereal boxes had FSC-certified content, while the Co-op, Lidl, Morrisons and Waitrose had no recycled content in their cereals.

Consumer Focus sustainability expert Lucy Yates said retailers must work to help consumers with a greener shop. “Saying you have a sustainable fish sourcing policy is not enough – consumers must be able to find it on the shop floor,” she said.

To read the full Consumer Focus report, click here.

CONSUMER FOCUS RETAILER SCORE CARD
Asda D (C in 2007)
Co-op C (D)
Marks & Spencer A (B)
Morrisons C (D)
Sainsbury’s A (B)
Tesco C (C)
Waitrose B (B)

Aldi and Lidl appeared in the report for the first time and were graded D.

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