Holland & Barrett

Our planet and its people

But what does it mean for H&B?
As a business we are mindful of the impacts we have on the planet and our communities. We need to continually improve the way in which we track all the great activities we’re doing and measure them. We’re working to better identify where our priorities are and how we’ll measure our performance over the short, medium and long-term. That doesn’t mean we’re slowing down – here are some of the things we’ve done in recent years…

Climate

  • We only buy electricity from 100% renewable sources, meaning that 85% of our stores in the UK and ROI and 26% of our stores in the Netherlands are powered by green energy. We are migrating all contracts over to 100% renewable but are not there yet. We are working towards getting them all on a renewable tariff.
  • We’re rolling out LED lighting across our stores, distribution centre and manufacturing site.
  • We’ve fitted telematics to our fleet to make sure we’re driving as efficiently as possible.

Waste

  • We’re proud to be zero waste to landfill across our Burton manufacturing and distribution centre and we have 100% landfill diversions from our stores in the UK and ROI.

Food

  • 2020 – We introduced “too good to waste” scheme to reduce food wastage in our stores. Selected products are sold at a discounted price after their best before date to help reduce waste.

Paper

  • 2017 - We removed all plastic from our online deliveries in (except bottle jackets which we continue to search for an alternative)
  • 2020 - We made paper receipts optional in our stores, cutting waste by 30%
  • We only use FSC certified recycled paper and card across for our online deliveries and own brand products and our brown paper bags in store are made from 100% recycled paper.

Plastic

  • 2010 - We banned plastic bags in our stores a whole five years before the UK government introduced the 5p charge
  • 2012 - In a bid to reduce the amount of plastics reaching our rivers and oceans, we banned microplastics across our beauty range, six years before the UK-wide ban
  • 2019 - Wet wipes ban: Concerned about the number of wet wipes reaching our rivers, oceans, and beaches, we stopped selling them online and in all our stores, replacing them with non-plastic versions.
  • 2021 - All our Fruits Nuts and Seeds are now packed in film bags that can be recycled with larger carrier bags, saving 79 tonnes of plastic.
  • 2021 - We’re rolling out new packaging for our Vitamins range, which is 20% lighter, made of a minimum 80% recycled plastic and can be easily recycled at home – removing around 179 tonnes of plastic by the end of 2022.
  • 2021 - Single Use Sheet Mask ban: we removed single use sheet masks from our stores, offering instead multi-use products.

Water

  • We use grey water and rainwater from our Burton manufacturing plant to wash our lorries. The lorry wash uses recycled water and is not connect to the mains, we have a pressure washer in the yard though that is connected to mains.

Charity

  • 2021 We’ve raised over £100k to NHS Charities Together, through Pennies, collecting donations from customers when they shop with us online or in store
  • We donated £600,000 of products in care packaging to hospitals to support during COVID-19
  • We worked with The Felix Project to help offer immunity support to the vulnerable in London – donating over 2000 units of Vitamin D
  • We raised over £13,000 in profits from the sale of paper bags for Healthy Hope in 2020 – and £30,000 was donated to Rainbows Hospice in 2021.
  • In response to the war in Ukraine we provided over £380,000 of food supplies to the people of Ukraine and also made an initial donation of £100,000 to the Disasters Emergency Committee and donated €50,000 to the Irish Red Cross. We continue our support through in store and online fundraising for ActionAid! And further product donations to NGO’s.
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