Time for Plan B?

You can imagine our excitement when Marks and Spencers' chief executive, Stuart Rose, announced his "Plan A", in January 2007, an ambitious plan to reduce his stores' environmental impact. He said, "We will become carbon neutral, only using offsetting as a last resort; we will ensure that none of our clothing or packaging needs to be thrown away". The plan includes "using packaging materials from sustainable or recycled sources, for example cardboard, metal, glass and plastic".

We admire Stuart's plans to make packaging recyclable, but surely reducing packaging would save more energy than recycling it? We decided to take a trip down to Marks to see how they were doing:

Look how comfy these tiger prawns look, each individually nestled in a moulded black plastic tray.

Wow! We were amazed at the packaging for these meatballs! Each lump of mincemeat is separately housed. Note the British rural scene and the 'organic' label to alleviate any environmental concerns you may have about throwing away all that plastic.

These Creme Brulees demonstrate a worrying fashion which we've noted in Marks lately. Each of the single portions sits in an individual ceramic ramekin. Perhaps the ramekins can be re-used, but there's a limit to how many hamster feeding bowls each shopper needs.

We like your words, Stuart, but perhaps reducing some of your excessive packaging might be in order. Can we suggest that you incorporate this into your "Plan B"?

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