Circularity & Waste

Pack4Good initiative

John Lewis became the first  large UK retailer to sign up to Canopy’s Pack4Good initiative. Through this initiative, the Partnership is committed to ensuring no items in our packaging supply chains are sourced from ancient or endangered forests.

Fashion repair trial

In July 2024, we launched a garment and textile repair trial in partnership with Timpson. The pilot makes repairs, alterations, dry cleaning, jacket re-waxing and handbag restoration available in five stores for a trial period.

thelittleloop at John Lewis

Our Oxford Street store has welcomed thelittleloop, stocking 400 lines of pre-loved clothing for kids aged 0 to 7. The trial allows customers to pick up free clear-out packs, enabling them to exchange unwanted kids’ clothing from over 100 brands for credit.

Waitrose customer messaging

In spring 2024, we collaborated with WRAP at Waitrose’s Thatcham store to test how different messaging affects sales of loose fruit and vegetables. The results highlighted some of the barriers preventing customers from buying  loose produce.   

Food waste is a key driver of climate change and a hurdle to meeting our net zero targets. While voluntary efforts by the Partnership, our suppliers and other retailers to manage food waste have made progress, the sector needs to move at pace and with conviction. We support mandatory food waste reporting that would ensure all food businesses track and reduce waste, providing the transparency and accountability needed to tackle this pressing issue at scale.

As members of the UK Plastics Pact, we’re committed to reducing and improving our packaging. At Waitrose, efforts have focused on exploring how to introduce reusable packaging. In our 2023/24 Ethics & Sustainability Report, we announced that we had moved our recyclability target to 2025 to align with the wider sector. Challenges remain on how best to scale reusable and refillable packaging formats in a way that does not overcomplicate the customer journey.

Another ongoing challenge for our 100% recyclability target concerns the most difficult-to-recycle materials, such as polystyrene for John Lewis products. We’re also working closely with our supply chain to try to reduce packaging in our supply chain operations.

At Waitrose, we intend to take the insights from our customer messaging trial, delivered in collaboration with WRAP at our Thatcham store, to consider scaling further initiatives that encourage customers to purchase more loose fruit and vegetables.

At both Waitrose and John Lewis, we’re seeking to refine our packaging strategies in 2025. This means we’ll work even more closely with sector teams to consider where our efforts can be best directed in future.

We’ve updated our circular design target to reflect learnings from our initial circular design collection. Our new target is that 70% of own-brand products will meet our circular design criteria by 2030. This change brings into scope more product lines, reflecting our increased ambition in this area. Since then, we have trained over 100 Partners in product development teams  to understand how best to implement our circular design principles.

We’ve successfully scaled up  trials of some schemes tested in 2024, including expanding our repairs and alterations trial with Timpson, offering more pre-loved products through a  concession at our Oxford Street store and continuing to partner with thelittleloop to offer pre-loved childrenswear. Alongside this, we’ll seek further pre-loved opportunities across John Lewis.