We’ve been particularly impressed this morning by UK Supermarket, Waitrose. The chain of 184 stores, is owned by it’s employees and has an “Organic Commitment” stating that:

“At Waitrose our commitment goes much further than simply buying from producers and selling on to our customers. It is a whole philosophy and we have established several unique initiatives to reflect this. We support organic research and development and sponsor organic excellence awards. This shows true commitment, which we hope will encourage more and more farmers and customers to understand that, at Waitrose, organic food is much more than just a passing trend.”

Waitrose introduced organic food way back in 1983 (ah, the year of my birth!) and twenty years later it apparently still has highest proportion of organic products out of all British supermarkets. They apparently refuse eggs from caged hens and produce much of their own produce on a 1600-hectare farm.

They offer grants to farmers to ease the conversion to organic and have schemes to help people buy locally grown/sourced products in all stores.

Adding to the impressive qualities of Waitrose - they give 2% of pre-tax profit to charities (please note the ‘PRE’ there) and give staff time off for volunteer work (if that was paid time off we’d be incredibly impressed, but we’re not sure on that one!)!

So we think this goes past greenwashing - Waitrose genuinely seem to care about sourcing their produce ethically and treating the world and their employees well.