Midcounties Co-operative Winners of Industry Leading Award for Sustainability

Each year, The Edie Awards recognise the efforts made to create a sustainable future and mitigate climate change, and this year marks 16 years of celebrating progressive businesses such as us.

The Energy Project of the Year Award highlights the best example of proactive energy management which utilises technologies and systems techniques to achieve significant energy savings. Placing a great focus on efficiency, cost and results for customers.

Our Society’s mission is ‘to be a successful consumer co-operative working towards creating a better, fairer world’ which has involved extensive research and member engagement to build the best strategies for today and the future.

In practice, this has resulted in reducing our carbon emissions by 50% over the next five years. So far our work has impressed the panel of 25 judges at this year’s Edie Awards, proving Midcounties Co-operative is not only on course but exceeding expectations.

In 2022, we reduced our electricity usage compared to the previous year by 8.8% across our food stores, saving over 870 tonnes of CO2 and £1.2 million in energy costs. A significant saving which was achieved by investing in

We have also listened to our members and researched consumer trends to provide a range of low-carbon products and services to customers and members, focusing on community renewable energy.

Our Community Power Tariff provided by Your Co-op Energy, is the UK’s only tariff powered by renewable electricity from community projects, which sees us work with 200 community energy groups to supply Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). We help to support the growth of renewable energy and provide power to over 60,000 homes each year.

Internally, Midcounties have also created an Energy Reduction Steering Group, involving our CEO, board executives, senior management and property experts. This weekly meeting focuses on driving forward our sustainability strategy and activities.

Our chief executive Phil Ponsonby said: “As a Society, we are striving to make a positive impact. This award recognises that and how we’re leading the way in energy management as we continue to support the growth of community renewable energy projects as well as reducing our energy usage across our operations.

We’re hugely proud of this achievement and we couldn’t have done it without the support of all our members, customers and colleagues.”

We are one of the largest consumer co-operatives in the UK, with our 730,000 owner-members at the heart of everything we do. We operate a range of businesses including

Our members also earn a share of our profits, save when they shop and help write the next chapter of our story.

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