We aim to build lasting business relationships founded on trust and integrity. We strive to be responsible stewards of our planet, working diligently to protect and restore nature and help create a more sustainable future.
Purpose in action
Protecting our natural world
From the land that grows our food at Waitrose, to the raw materials that become furniture and clothing at John Lewis, our work is fundamentally connected to the natural world.
Protecting our planet is not just a goal; it's central to our business strategy. We invite you to explore our progress in our 2024/25 Ethics & Sustainability Report.See the highlights in our film below, or read the full report here.
Helping our local communities
Community at our heart and change the text in this section to read: From the very beginning, our Partnership was built to make a real difference in people's lives. That founding value is still the heartbeat of our business today.
We support the communities we call home by working with incredible charity partners, including FareShare and Home-Start UK. This commitment comes to life in our stores, where our dedicated local teams build strong relationships with neighbourhood organisations through volunteering, donations, and active engagement.
Driving sustainable action
It’s not just our business that is trying to lead sustainable innovation, it’s our Partners too. Take our Waitrose St Katharine’s Dock team for example. They enthusiastically welcomed a fleet of new wirelessly charged electric vehicles into their store to trial.
The vans have already proved a big hit with them as well as our customers, and will help us on our journey to eliminating fossil fuel use by 2030. We estimate this will save 70,000 tonnes of Co2 every year. By the same year we’ll have electrified all our cars, vans and light trucks and for heavier long distance trucks, half are already running on biomethane and all will be by 2028. There’s more to do but these are huge steps to achieving our net zero goals.
Farming with nature
At the heart of our commitment to a happier world is a simple idea: we must protect and restore the nature that sustains us. That is why we are reimagining the future of farming at our Waitrose Leckford Estate.
We are dedicating Leckford to the principles of regenerative agriculture—a way of farming that enriches the soil, enhances biodiversity, and builds resilience. Recognised as a LEAF Beacon of Excellence, our estate began its 15-year journey as a living laboratory in 2021, testing innovations we hope the entire industry will adopt on the path to net zero.
Our work at this living laboratory is focused on one question: how can we farm most effectively with nature? Working alongside experts, we will pinpoint the best techniques to manage land while reducing reliance on artificial inputs and fossil fuels, tracking our progress against clear goals.
But this knowledge isn’t just for us. We are committed to sharing our discoveries with our farmers, suppliers, and partners across the industry, helping to elevate regenerative farming from a 'nice-to-have' to an everyday essential.
This collaborative approach—investing in innovation and exchanging insights—is how we will deliver on our 2035 net zero commitment.
We'll use what we learn to identify the farming techniques that manage land most effectively with an aim to reduce reliance on chemicals, artificial processes and fossil fuels. Tracking our progress with experts so we can create clear benchmarks and goals. And we'll share this knowledge with our farmers, suppliers and interested parties throughout the agriculture and retail industries, to elevate regeneration and conservation from a nice-to-have to an essential everyday farming practice. By investing in these initiatives and exchanging insights with farmers in our supply base will help us to deliver on our 2035 carbon net zero commitment.
Being kinder to our animals
At Waitrose, we’ve pioneered higher animal welfare standards for decades but we wanted to go even further. That’s why we partnered with Scotland’s Rural College to create a revolutionary new app to help us assess the emotional wellbeing of our farm animals.
The first of its kind, the app aims to manage and improve opportunities that animals have to experience a good and enriching life. Specifically, it was designed to help our welfare assessors better understand, recognise and record emotionally expressive behaviour that, in part, contribute to an animal’s quality of life.
To some, it may sound too good to be true but the app has since earned industry recognition - recently winning the coveted “Farming for the Future” category at the BBC Food & Farming Awards. Having already applied the technology to a number of livestock supply chains, we are now looking at other areas where we can apply the app and hope the process will lead to even further improvements to animal welfare standards across the UK.
Eradicating waste from design
Last year we launched our Circular Future Fund The Million Pound Challenge in partnership with Hubbub, an award winning environmental organisation. We asked applicants to find creative and innovative solutions to our throwaway culture of 'make - take - dispose' with the aim of discovering fresh ideas to encourage ways to 'repair, reuse or recycle'.
After 245 applications and 8 finalists, we picked 4 winners including a designer of expandable children’s shoes to an innovative polyester recycling technology, each one awarded a portion of a £1m pot to invest into further developing their ideas.