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(Photo captioned: Waitrose supports the RHS campaign for School Gardening, which aims to encourage schools to set up gardens)

British sourcing

The Partnership nurtures long-term relationships with its British suppliers, paying them a fair price and helping them to reinvest in their businesses. John Lewis owns a production unit in the north of England, Herbert Parkinson, which produces its own-brand duvets, pillows, furnishing fabrics and ready-made curtains, and provides its made-to-measure curtain service. The Partnership’s Leckford Estate supplies Waitrose shops with milk, poultry, mushrooms, apples, pears, cider apple juice, eggs and honey. Both Waitrose and John Lewis sell a range of products from British suppliers from meat and dairy, to Scottish wool and Sheffield steel. Supporting this commitment, the Waitrose Local and Regional Sourcing programme is one of the most established local sourcing initiatives in its sector. All Waitrose shops sell regional beer and most stores have a broader local and regional offering with shelf-edge ticketing and product labelling detailing the origins and provenance of each product.

Health and nutrition

Waitrose is committed to working with suppliers to improve its offer on healthier everyday products and to drive nutritional quality through appropriate ingredient selection. In 2009 it removed all artificial colours from own-brand products, continued to use the Food Standards Agency (FSA) ‘traffic light’ labelling system, worked to standardise the format of nutritional messaging to make it easier for customers to identify and understand, launched a gluten-free range in March 2009, and continued to provide nutrition and health information through its Nutrition Advice Service. On other Government initiatives such as salt, sugar and saturated fat reduction, it has already met many of the targets proposed by the FSA. It also remains committed to highlighting the sensible drinking message to both customers and Partners.

Waitrose also recognises the important role it can play in educating children about healthy eating. In March 2009, Waitrose embarked on a three-year sponsorship of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Campaign for School Gardening, which aims to encourage schools to set up gardens, so that pupils learn about plants and gardening. Over 10,000 schools are already involved in the scheme, which aims to get 80% of UK primary schools growing fruit and vegetables by the end of 2010. Waitrose also invested in an established range of Waitrose Education projects, including its Food for Thought Activity Pack for secondary schools and free educational events involving 22,000 children.

Responsible sourcing

All our own-brand suppliers must commit to meeting the requirements of our Partnership wide Responsible Sourcing Code of Practice. Supplier labour standards and working practices are thoroughly assessed and all sites are subject to an independent ethical audit. Should noncompliances be identified, we work directly with our suppliers and ethical auditors to establish action programmes to help raise labour standards.

The Partnership actively collaborates with other businesses and organisations to drive best practice in the supply chain such as the Government’s Prompt Payment Code, a voluntary scheme which the Partnership became a co-supporter of in December 2008. The Partnership has taken other constructive steps to help the businesses we trade with, especially small enterprises, to remain viable and prosper. These include Waitrose’s milk price pledge, through which it agrees to pay its dairy farmers a premium over the market price, and its pricing model for British pig farmers, which takes into account the cost of sustainable production methods and ensures suppliers receive a fair return.

Concerned about stakeholders reporting poor labour standards and human rights violations in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, John Lewis has worked in collaboration with an external consultancy to map the provenance of the cotton used in the furnishing textiles from one of its suppliers and is committed to applying the lessons learned from this work to the remainder of its cotton supply base, both in home and fashion.