The challenge: helping Kingfisher ensure its sustainable growth plan is robust and resonates with customers

Kingfisher’s sustainable growth plan is a roadmap up to 2025 that sets out the next stage to becoming a ‘net positive’ company.

Bioregional’s role as part of this sustainability strategy refresh was to propose new targets that retained Kingfisher’s net positive commitment while streamlining the number of commitments and ensuring greater focus on what customers and colleagues really care about.

It was important also to respond to its most material issues such as sustainable management and efficient use of key resources and customer energy and water consumption.

How we helped: setting stretching sustainability targets and tracking progress

Bioregional worked with Fortitude Partners to agree four new customer-facing headline goals.

We then provided technical support and modelling to help Kingfisher define create 12 realistic yet ambitious customer and operational 2025 targets including:

• Enable a 50% reduction in customer energy use
• A 50% improvement in customer water efficiency
• 20% of total sales create healthier homes and help customers connect with nature
• Ensure sustainable management and efficient use of key resources (2025) including 100% responsibly sourced wood and paper and peat-free bagged growing media (2020).

We created a number of comprehensive models to inform the targets. For example, for the customer energy use target we calculated the lifetime energy and carbon consumption of all energy-using product ranges.

We then modelled how much energy and carbon reduction could be achieved by improving the energy performance standards of its ranges. This provided a strong evidence base on which to set the target and to develop a clear roadmap to achieving it.

We also helped ensure that the UN Sustainable Development Goals underpin the new strategy and mapped Kingfisher’s direct contribution to them.

Bioregional continues to provide technical target-setting support to Kingfisher, specifically on greenhouse gas reduction targets in line with its commitment to the Science Based Targets initiative.

Tracking progress: Our ongoing sustainability reporting work for Kingfisher

Working with a team of Kingfisher experts including internal and external auditors, every year we collate and analyse annual data submissions from Kingfisher’s ten operating companies and its offices. We cover around 150 data points on issues ranging from property energy, transport, waste and water to community investment and employee diversity. This enables the company to provide a comprehensive overview of progress against targets and milestones.

We also support with its annual Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) submission. In 2017, Kingfisher was upgraded to a leadership score. CDP is a global initiative encouraging businesses on behalf of investor signatories to publicly disclose their carbon emissions and manage carbon and climate change risk.

About Kingfisher

Kingfisher is Europe’s largest home improvement retailer with over 1,200 stores in ten countries across Europe, Russia and Turkey. It employs 77,000 people, has annual sales of over £11 billion.