When I look back on the achievements my team and all of my colleagues working in sustainability across the business have made this year I feel immensely proud. Here’s just a small flavour below…

On products and supply chain, 2012 was the year that we really started to embed sustainability across our suppliers thanks to the strategic vision and support of Barry Williams. We started the year with a pilot and ended with nearly 300 suppliers, amounting for over £12bn of annual sales, on our Sustain & Save Exchange. Using the lens of sustainability to review how products are made is already making these suppliers not only lighter on the environment but also more efficient and closer strategic partners to Asda. We’ve given a Golden Rule – suppliers keep all savings they make from using the Exchange which we also fully fund for them!

Thanks to the guidance of Paul Kelly, in our own operations our latest carbon footprint shows a further 4.3% reduction in carbon emissions since the previous year which totals a whopping 17.7% absolute reduction since 2007. This year’s reductions were driven by colleagues in energy, transport, refrigeration and waste. As these are absolute numbers that means we achieved them in spite of nearly doubling the number of stores we operate – an amazing achievement unrivalled in UK retail.

A few weeks ago I was a guest speaker at the RSPO’s annual meeting, the RT10. Walmart asked me to write a blog on this event for their Green Room and so I thought I’d also post it here for our readers. If you were looking for one place with all the key Walmart’s palm oil activities and facts and figures then this is it. The video is a little long but again will give you an overview on our key activity to date and what the future for this project holds.

Please let me know what you think…

Palm oil is used in over half of the products we sell so when it’s claimed that its production is leading to loss of habitats for species such as orangutans and Sumatran tigers as well as negative environmental and social consequences we need to act. That’s why Walmart made a commitment in 2010 that by the end of 2015 all the palm oil we use would come from sustainable sources. To us a sustainable source means palm oil or derivatives certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) or to Rainforest Alliance’s standards.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at the 10th Annual Roundtable meeting on sustainable palm oil in Singapore, hosted by the RSPO. I was asked to talk about Walmart’s experiences and share what successes and challenges we have encountered since we implemented our palm oil policy.

Kathryn’s time as the 2012 sustainability intern in my team comes imminently. She’s been an amazing asset teaming up with me on the Walmart global palm oil project and a really nice person to work with. I’m off to Singapore now for the annual RSPO palm oil meeting (more to come on this as we’ve got a very exciting announcement to make there!) so we’ve said our ‘goodbyes’.

Kathryn kindly filmed a few thoughts, above. I’m delighted that I once again achieved my aim of a two-way internship – we get some needed support but our interns get a boost from it too. For Kathryn this means that she is off to a fab new job at Bureau Veritas. That makes it two for two as my first intern last year, Ellie, went off to a great job at DHL. Both have said that the internship was a major factor in them getting these positions. I firmly believe that the fantastic Asda culture helped both of them to achieve their full potential.

I’ve just come back from Northern Ireland where I was attending and speaking at the Business in the Community’s first Summit there. I also spent time in store and talking to colleagues. The Summit was excellent and spoke to the role that business must play in helping to make a difference, particularly in these current challenging times. Northern Ireland’s economy in particular is not recovering as fast as the rest of the UK and youth unemployment is rising.

I was asked by BBC Radio our views on our role and gave a quick interview alongside Mike Barry of M&S. I love to collaborate with other companies as together we can make the most difference even if our view on making sustainability affordable and accessible is different to how M&S see themselves. Mike’s a great guy. You can hear the clip below:

Barry Williams is the top man for food at Asda, what we call the Chief Merchandising Officer for Food. Here’s someone truly driven by helping people to save money whilst delivering ‘Value with Values’. He gave me a challenge a while back to closer support him and his teams to become more sustainable. I love a challenge and this led to the creation of the Asda Sustain & Save Exchange.

Back in January I described how we were engaging with 2degrees to trial an innovative tool to help our suppliers become more sustainable, save cash and become closer strategic partners. Well this has been a phenomenal success.