M&S uses food waste to power stores

Only a few days after WRAP launched its campaign to minimise food waste in the UK, Marks and Spencer has announced it is to power six of its Simply Food stores with renewable energy. The energy will come from an anaerobic digester (AD) that turns household food waste into electricity, reducing the amount of methane emitted into the atmosphere.

Like most other renewable energy systems, the power actually comes from the national grid, but M&S makes sure that the AD puts the same amount of electricity back into the grid.

The first digester, which is already in use, is based in Shropshire. Olivia Ross from M&S says they are looking into whether it makes sense from an environmental point of view to send the retailer's own food waste to the digester. At the moment, it comes from Shropshire households. The second AD will be situated on a farm, where the food waste will give way to around 8,000 tonnes of cow slurry and 3,000 tonnes of agricultural crops.

Ross also told SmartPlanet that M&S has arranged for a group of farmers, half of which already supply M&S, to go to Germany this week to learn about anaerobic digesters. "The farmers will have to invest in the AD systems themselves, but M&S can guarantee to buy power from them, which makes financial and environmental sense for the farmers as well as M&S," she says.

The initiative is part of the famous Plan A -- the £200 million, five-year project to make M&S carbon neutral. Stuart Rose, chief executive of M&S said: "We are now the first major retailer to use food waste to power some of our stores. We know there is still much to do, but we are continuing to make strong progress.”

Related Links

• SmartPlanet