In May we hosted our annual Sustainability Update, welcoming over 120 guests from NGOs, suppliers, charity partners, government and research organisations to talk about the importance of ‘Collaborating for Impact’ in achieving our collective sustainability goals. We’ve been updating our stakeholders on our progress against our Sustainability Plan for a number of years now, but this year for the first time, we decided to take a case study approach. We had an interactive and engaging morning with Sainsbury’s colleagues discussing, alongside our project partners, both the challenges that we have addressed and successes that we have celebrated on our sustainability journey, as well as what's to come.

I’d like to say sincere "thanks" to our fellow collaborators who, along with their Sainsbury’s counterparts, shared details and insights from their projects; From Public Health England, WRAP, and OceanMind to The Woodland Trust, the UK Water Partnership and our colleagues in Proud@Sainsbury’s, our own internal LGBTA Network, in one morning we were given an inspiring lesson in what can be achieved through working in partnership – it truly was ‘Working Together’ in practice!

One of the main points that I hope everyone took away from the session was that the sustainability challenges that we face are complex, and it is our job to spot these challenges on the horizon, get to the heart of the problem, and provide an informed solution before our customers are even worrying about it. To do this we need to be agile and work closely with our suppliers. If this issue of Working Together gives you pause for thought on any of the grand sustainability challenges of our time, do let us know at working.together@sainsburys.co.uk. 

With very best wishes, 

Judith