Last year's targets

Community

• Deliver community health promotion activity that aligns to our core healthcare offer, specifically including suncare and Change One Thing Schools (smoking, healthy eating, exercise).
  
  Achieved.  We created a community toolkit for all our expert Suncare Consultants to support sun safety activity in their local community.  The Sunshine Sam character was further developed and used in a new online game for schools. 
  
  Boots UK successfully launched Change One Thing Schools in January 2008. 1,485 secondary school teachers registered with the site, which received 15,569 visits since the launch to the end of 2008/09.
• Launch new primary modules on Boots Learning Store (our existing health educational website) on healthy eating and physical activity.
  
  Ongoing.  Our core health education website for UK schools received 211,373 visits during 2008/09, a 29% increase on 2007/08. New gaming modules on healthy eating and exercise have been developed and launch is planned for the spring term 2010.
• Increase the number of volunteers at our support office and for our Look Good...Feel Better and suncare consultant programmes.
  
  Achieved.  The number of Boots UK Support Office colleagues who volunteer to support local children with their reading had more than doubled to 75 people by the end of 2008/09. The number of Support Office team challenges remained the same, with 12 challenges taking place during the year.
  
  We increased the number of Look Good…Feel Better volunteers from 86 to 107, which represents a 24% increase on 2007/08.
  
  The number of suncare volunteers remained level during 2008/09 compared with 2007/08. The lack of increase in number of volunteers may have been as a result of the the poor weather.
• Match up to £0.1 million funding for our people’s chosen causes during 2008/09, extending Boots UK's “Make the difference fund” to colleagues from former Alliance Pharmacy.
  
  Achieved.   Target was exceeded.  713 claims were received in total with £178,365 being matched, including those from former Alliance Pharmacy colleagues.
• Increase the number of employees who donate to charity via Give As You Earn (GAYE) to 5%.
  
  Ongoing.  3.8% (2,679) of our colleagues were donating to charity via Give As You Earn by the end of 2008/09. A decision has been taken to suspend promotion due to the wider economic situation – we’ll be reviewing this decision in September 2009.
• Develop and encourage Boots UK's involvement in effective retail crime partnerships across the UK, and ensure strategies to tackle business crime are an integral part of all Business Improvement Districts’ business plans. 
  
  Incomplete.  The lack of any coordinating body for England and Wales has limited the extent to which the private sector can support the development of effective local crime reduction initiatives. We remain hopeful this will be addressed in the coming year, allowing Boots UK to play a leading role in any new structure.

Environment

• Deliver an interactive display for science fairs and museums, for example, to promote the concept of “green chemistry” and Boots UK's expertise to a non-technical audience.
  
  Achieved.  An interactive website, www.greenconsumerproducts.co.uk was trialled at the annual 'Discovery Days' exhibition in York in July 2008. It looked at the lifecycle of soap, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick. A subsequent interactive display unit based on the same design as Boots Advantage Card machines will be hosted for six months in Glasgow Science Centre from April 2009 and in Bristol from October 2009.
• Increase the amount of credibly-certified sustainable wood/paper by a further 25% by March 2013 against a 2008 baseline.
  
  Ongoing.  The launch of Boots UK Sustainable Sourcing Database in autumn 2008 has enabled us to record the traceability and accreditation status of our wood, pulp and paper products and materials. We have been able to set our 2008 baseline of credibly-certified wood, pulp and paper at 59.89% of material in products and goods not for resale. We are now developing strategies to increase this total to achieve the 2013 target.
• As part of our May Day Commitment, reduce the carbon footprint of Boots legacy stores by 30% by 2020 compared to 2005.
  
  Ongoing.  Our absolute carbon emissions have increased from 218,689 tonnes in 2007/08 to 223,009 tonnes in 2008/09, a 1.2% increase (the 2007/08 data reported last year has been restated to reflect more accurately the independent business operations located on our Nottingham Support Office site). Despite ongoing investment that is improving our energy efficiency, upward pressures on carbon dioxide emissions remain through improving the offer for our customers (including, for example, provision of doctors surgeries, longer opening hours and general improvement to in-store air conditioning). New stores in 2008/09 accounted for 1.1% of electricity consumption in the year. We remain committed to achieving our long term objective.
   
• Further reduce like for like carbon dioxide emissions by 10% by March 2012 by, for example, expanding the use of double deck trailers, wagon and drag vehicles, shared user schemes and backloading.
  
  Ongoing.  During 2008/09 we expanded our existing fleet of double deck trailers. We now operate 152 of these on our delivery routes from our central distribution centre in Nottingham to our 17 regional distribution centres. A major supply chain reconfiguration programme was completed in September 2009 and the full effect of these changes will be seen during 2010/11.
• Support the Courtauld Commitment 2010 target by continuing to reduce retail packaging waste by 2.5% each year.  
  
  Ongoing.  The Courtauld Commitment packaging target signed by major retailers and brand owners is to collectively deliver absolute reductions in packaging waste by 2010. From a 2005 baseline we have delivered in 2008/09 a 19.4% reduction (av. 6.46% pa) in packaging used in our retail operations (retail and transit packaging).
• Against a 2008 base-line, achieve a further 20 percentage point reduction in waste sent to landfill by March 2013 on a like for like basis.
  
  

  Ongoing.  This year we have reduced the percentage of waste sent to landfill from within our retail, support office and logistics operations by three percentage points from 50% in 2007/08 to 47% in 2008/09. During this same period our actual waste tonnage sent to landfill reduced by around 2000 tonnes.

  We have expanded the use of Energy From Waste Plants and Materials Recovery Facilities where these are available locally to where waste is produced. We also now have around 20% of shops previously trading as Alliance Pharmacy recycling cardboard waste.

Marketplace

• Achieve a fundraising target of £0.5 million for Children In Need.
  
  Achieved.  The fifth year of Boots UK's support for BBC Children in Need saw another successful fundraising campaign raising £530,000 for the charity.  Funds were raised through the sale of Pudsey bear merchandise and a wide variety of colleague fundraising events.  
  
• Raise £1million for our women's cancer charities -  Breast Cancer Care and The Eve Appeal.
  
  Achieved.  Over £1.2million was raised for women’s cancer charities during 2008/09.  £677,000 was raised for Breast Cancer Care during the 12th year of support for the charity.  Funds were raised through a range of exclusive pink beauty accessories, No7 limited edition items, pin badges and some fantastic fundraising efforts from our No7 consultants.  In addition, Boots UK boxed charity Christmas cards included a donation to Breast Cancer Care.  We also raised £593,000 for The Eve Appeal through a variety of colleague fundraising activities, counter top items, product donations and charity Christmas cards.
• Conduct a minimum of 250 site assessments for supplier social accountability, probing to the appropriate level in the supply chain.
  
  Achieved.   266 audits against Boots Code of Conduct for Ethical Trading were carried out, with agreed action plans established for each supplier, as appropriate. 
• Demonstrate and communicate the way we integrate “healthy living” into our everyday product development work.
  
  Achieved.   Our nutrition product briefs now include a link to the CSR website and Healthier Living policies. To assist stores teams, our Breastfeeding Position Statement is linked to the content on infant feeding advice on MyStoreNet (MSN). Boots UK contributed to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) publication, "A Commitment to Health" launched in June.

Workplace

• Launch a maternity charter in stores and support offices.
  
  Incomplete.   Improvements have been made to the overall maternity package and there is more work to do on the principles. This will be done as part of a diversity toolkit, the implementation of which has been temporarily delayed.
• Deliver diversity awareness training to line managers in stores and support offices.
  
  Ongoing.  A new module on diversity has been launched and the early uptake has been promising and will be assessed on an ongoing basis.
• Introduce an e-learning platform for Boots UK that will offer a comprehensive management learning system – store colleagues to have personal on-line learning accounts by December 2008 and access to at least 50 hours of e-learning material by March 2009.
  
  Ongoing.  Around 20 hours of e-learning materials were made available, with further modules planned. By the end of March 2009 just over 100,000 e-learning modules were completed by store colleagues, with 30% of individuals completing one module or more. Rapid progress continues to be made.
• Carry out a full internal Safety Management Review by the end of July 2008, establishing a baseline from which to produce an integrated health and safety management system for our new retail structure – reviewing the fundamentals of what we do, and building on the best of both. Detailed plans and targets going forward to be reported to the Boots UK Board.
  
  Achieved.  A Safety Management Review of our retail Health and Safety Management System was completed in 2008 following the guidance in the Health and Safety Executive's Guidance - "Successful Health and Safety Management". The review's findings inform our health and safety plans for 2009/10; progress in developing our Health and Safety Management System will be assessed internally in September 2009 with an independent review by our Lead Authority partnership scheduled for early 2010.
• Raise awareness of Boots UK employees and managers on mental health issues, primarily related to the workplace but also more generally.
  
  Ongoing.  We have reviewed our approach to workplace health and confirmed that this is one of three key areas we want to focus on, (providing professional pharmacy services to our people and understand better the causes of stress within specific business functions are the other two). We have identified what we want to achieve by raising awareness, drawn up the information to do this and are now establishing the most appropriate way to implement for successful delivery.