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Australia’s top 10 most prolific businesses on sustainability

Off the back of new research conducted by Nine which showed the commercial value in businesses and brands investing in sustainability, media monitoring service Streem has conducted a ranking of Australia’s top ten most prolific Australian brands when speaking about building a more sustainable future, in the past 12 months, across print and online coverage in the media.

The food, mining, and banking industries dominate the list, with Woolworths significantly in the lead at the top spot, mentioned a total of 1432 times.

BHP came in second with 1346 unique mentions across the board, while Coles came in a close third with 1320 mentions, and The Commonwealth Bank of Australia taking fourth spot with an overall of 1263 mentions.

Woolworths Group chief marketing officer, Andrew Hicks told Mumbrella: “It’s clear sustainability has never been more top of mind for Australians. Customers look to us to make their weekly shop better for the environment, and show them what they can do to reduce their own footprint – whether that be cutting plastic, reducing food waste or supporting sustainable sourcing.

“Our purpose is built around creating a better tomorrow, and as Australia’s largest food and everyday needs retailer, we have a responsibility to share our environmental ambitions and hold ourselves accountable to our customers and shareholders.”

Hicks added: “Sustainability is now a core pillar of our re-imagined Today’s Fresh Food People platform, featuring prominently in our advertising and marketing, and integrated in our long term strategy.

“We hope that by sharing our ambitions, progress and expertise, we can provide insights to help other businesses do their part as we work together for a brighter future.

“We know there’s still more to do and we’re constantly learning from our peers and leaders overseas about how we can make sustainable change, and share our progress in meaningful ways with customers.”

In July last year, Woolworths launched its Today’s Fresh Food People platform, a reimagined brand ethos, building on the equity of the supermarket’s well-known Fresh Food People platform. A primary pillar of the platform is ‘growing greener’, which has provided a vehicle for enhanced visibility of Woolworths’ sustainability milestones in recent years, and commitments in the years to come, spanning green energy, sustainable sourcing, food waste and plastic reduction.

In 2020, Woolworths Group released its Better Tomorrow 2025 Plan, charting its sustainability ambitions across the pillars of people, product and planet. In line with its ambitions, Woolworths has announced a range of initiatives over the last two years including, a transition to 100% renewable energy by 2025, including a commitment to become net carbon positive by 2050 if not sooner, validation of its climate targets by the Science Based Targets Initiate, the conversion of meat trays to be 100% recyclable, and the removal of single use plastic picnicware.

It also included the signing of Woolworths Group’s first renewable power purchase agreement, ongoing plastic reduction to remove thousands of tonnes of plastic from packaging, the co-founding of plastic recycling startup Samsara to develop lower footprint recycling technology which supports infinite recycling, the rollout of battery recycling bins at all supermarkets nationwide, and the launch of paper shopping bags

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