“It is becoming increasingly obvious to all businesses that sustainable growth can only be achieved through greater attention to the world around us than has been the case in the past. The links between economic growth, transformation, poverty alleviation, the environment and climate change can either form a vicious or a virtuous circle. For the past 75 years , these issues have always been at the heart of Woolworths, but the launch of the Woolworths ‘Good business journey’ marks a step change in the way we will operate going forward, ensuring that we drive that virtuous circle that will benefit all of our stakeholders” Simon Susman CEO.
The good business journey is an acceleration of Woolworths ongoing commitment to managing the business’ impact as it continues to grow and meet the increasing needs of South African consumers, and specifically defines a 5-year plan to 2012 in key areas. It is the result of a comprehensive and systematic review of the way Woolworths addresses the issue of sustainable growth within the context of the changing social and environmental needs of South Africa, incorporating a series of challenging targets and commitments, centred on four key priorities: accelerating transformation, driving social development, enhancing our environmental focus, and addressing climate change.
Accelerate transformation
- Become a level 4 contributor (dti code)
- Drive preferential procurement
- Advance skills development and equity ownership
- Push our “South Africa first” approach harder
Drive social development
- Utilise Woolworths expertise in enterprise development
- Increase social contributions to more than R300m per year
Enhance environmental focus
- Increase organic and free range food sales fourfold to over R1bn per annum and increase organic content clothing sales to more than R1bn per annum
- Continue the transformation to healthy eating & lifestyles through the Good food journey
- Accelerate environmental conservation and biodiversity programmes
- Reduce and recycle packaging from source through to customer
Address climate change
- Reduce relative carbon footprint by 30%
- Focus on energy savings and transport emissions
- Open a trial carbon neutral store
The Good business journey is a business imperative for Woolworths. Many aspects of it are linked together to generate a multiplier effect. If we reduce product miles by encouraging greater local sourcing we will open up opportunities for enterprise development and preferential procurement; if we scale back our packaging we will use less energy and cardboard, thereby reducing our carbon footprint.