Waste and recycling

The issue

Over the last few years the need for the UK to reduce its reliance on landfill has become more critical as existing landfill sites are becoming full and new sites are not being developed. The use of landfill has also been linked to climate change as the gases released from such sites can contribute to climate change if they're not captured / treated.

In addition, the way in which waste is managed has become increasingly complex. New legislation covering areas such as what can be sent to landfill, and how hazardous waste, waste electrical and electronic equipment, and used batteries must be managed, alongside changes to the packaging regulations, for example, all continue to increase both the complexity of environmental compliance and business costs.

What we're doing

For many years Boots UK has been a leader in the management of waste and recycling activities within the retail sector and has a sound record in waste minimisation that has placed us in a good position for dealing with new legislative requirements.

We've operated a recycling facility on our Nottingham support office site for the last 50 years. The current facility receives paper and cardboard, soft mixed plastic, glass bottles, printer toner cartridges and 35 mm film pots from our site and many stores.

All our regional cross dock centres recycle cardboard and act as transit points for our stores to send recyclable material back to our Nottingham support office for "bulking up" and collection by recycling contractors. Over 22,700 tonnes of materials are collected, sorted and recycled each year.

In our automated central distribution centre in Nottingham we recover the transit packaging, cardboard and plastic which we have removed from our suppliers' deliveries. This makes life simpler for our stores and reduces the demand within our supply chain for returning packaging waste.

We're continuing to focus on reducing our reliance on landfill, and have set an aspirational target to achieve a further 20% reduction in waste sent to landfill by March 2013 on a like for like basis compared with 2007/08.

This year we have reduced the percentage of waste sent to landfill by 1.2% (from 45.2% in 2009/10 to 44.0% in 2010/11), with the actual amount of waste sent to landfill reducing by around 800 tonnes. The 2009/10 Boots UK figures have been adjusted to reflect the transfer of responsibilities for the distribution of prescription medicines to Alliance Healthcare in the UK.

Since our 2007/08 baseline, waste sent to landfill has reduced by 21.5% (5430 tonnes) with the percentage of waste sent to landfill reduced by 8.0 percentage points. In the same period our total waste (disposed and recycled) has reduced by 7.2% (3523 tonnes).

Notable initiatives

In 2009/10 we increased the number of stores able to use material recovery facilities to around 450, which are located close to where the waste is produced. In 2010/11 we have again increased the number of stores to around 525. For these stores we have accounted for the waste in both our landfill and recycling data, based on information from our waste contractors.

Our new distribution centre at Burton-on-Trent sends non-recyclable waste for incineration with heat recovery rather than using landfill. This year this has diverted around 110 tonnes from landfill.

Our central distribution centre has reviewed the use of paper towels and plastics drinks cups and as a result has fitted hand dryers and issued reusable drinks bottles to colleagues. Whilst the benefits of these two initiatives in tonnage reduction will be comparatively small, the volume of waste has reduced significantly.

We have explored innovative ways to recycle waste streams which are made of multi material. This year our cardboard recycler working with Remploy segregated around 31 tonnes of material to enable its recycling, the waste would otherwise have been sent to landfill.

The charts below shows our waste and recycling data for the past four consecutive years. A number of figures have been restated following external auditing and structural changes within the business.

Waste and recycling 2010/11

Total waste (tonnes)

Waste to landfill (tonnes)

* Landfill and recycling figures have been restated following external audit review of our calculation methodology.