Environmental Sustainability: A Case Study of Woolworths' Initiatives

This report examines Woolworths' environmental sustainability initiatives, highlighting the company's efforts to manage renewable and non-renewable resources, reduce pollution, and address challenges related to infrastructural and climatic changes. The report details specific initiatives such as using waste material for land filling, implementing recycling for packing processes, reducing carbon production by 10% per year through optimized outlet locations, and reducing nitrogen production by 15% through innovative strategies like replacing electrical products with renewable energy sources. Furthermore, it considers ALDI GmbH & Co.KG Essen as a major competitor and notes their adoption of photovoltaic systems and reusable carrier bags. The report references academic work on environmental footprints and planetary boundaries, along with Woolworths' official environmental and sustainability reports, providing a comprehensive overview of the company's sustainability practices.

Sustainability

Environmental sustainability
• Evironmental sustainability can be determined to be the rates of
renewable resource harvest, non renewable, harvest and pollution
creation depletion that it can be continued indefinitely.
• Triple Bottom Line framework states that activities and initiatives
that are taken in order to satisfy economical, social and
environmental responsibilities are called sustainability.

Woolworths
• Turn over: AUD $ 59 billion (2016)
• Products: Sells groceries like packed
foods, meat, fruits, etc. Health and
beauty, dairy, egg and fridge.
• Geographical location: Multinational
• Industry: Retail
• Employees: 175,000

Challenges faced by company.
• The organization is offering green products
• To maintain freshness of products along with maintaining
sustainability of environment they are considering various steps
Challenges
• Infrastructural changes
• Climatic changes
• Controlling carbon footprints

Environmental sustainability initiative of
Woolworth
• Use waste material for land filling: Through land filling company
controlls pollution at great extend.
• Implements recycle for packing process: It helps in reducing
consumption of raw material and maintains ecological balance.

Environmental sustainability initiative of
Woolworth
• Reduced carbon production at the rate of 10% per year:
Woolworth have opened outlet at per square meter, due to which
transportation process get reduced.
• Reduced nitrogen production by 15% through innovative
strategies: In this process all the electrical products are replaced by
the renewable energy sources.

Woolworths’ Environmental
Sustainability Report Card
• ALDI GmbH & Co.KG Essen is the biggest competitor of
Woolworth.
• They are considering photovoltaic system as energy sources.
• They are offering recycled and reusable carrier bags.

REFERENCES
Fang, K. and et.al., 2015. Understanding the complementary linkages
between environmental footprints and planetary boundaries in a
footprint–boundary environmental sustainability assessment
framework. Ecological Economics. 114. pp.218-226.
Environment and sustainability. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/community-and-
responsibility/group-responsibility/environment>. [Accessed on
28th September 2017].