Marks & Spencer‘s new ‘Your Green Idea’ competition is now open for entries, and offers the chance for someone to win £100,000 to spend on ‘greening’ an organisation of their choice, such as a school, a local community group or a charity.
‘Your Green Idea’ invites people to share their ideas for new, positive ‘green actions’ that M&S could implement under Plan A, its eco and ethical plan, so that all of its 21 million customers can get involved in helping the environment.
The competition is open to everyone via www.yourgreenidea.co.uk, which, since it launched just two weeks ago, has been visited by over 30,000 people eager to learn more about the competition and keen to register their interest. The competition will be supported with national print advertising and in-store décor.
All entries must be received by the end of the day on 16 May 2010. Following that, M&S’ panel of experts will decide on the top three green ideas which will be put to a public vote later this year. The final winning idea will be implemented by M&S and rolled out across its 700 plus UK stores within the next year.
Sir Stuart Rose, M&S Chairman, said, “’Your Green Idea’ is generating real excitement – we’ve had over 30,000 people visit the website in the last couple of weeks – and with £100,000 up for grabs for the winning idea, we’re not surprised that so many people are keen to enter the competition.”
“We’re looking for a ground-breaking green idea that we can implement across our stores so that all of our customers can get even more involved in Plan A. We want people to think creatively about actions that could really change people’s behaviour and help us make a difference to the environment. The competition closes in mid-May and we think it’s going to be fierce – so get your thinking caps on.”
‘Your Green Idea’ was launched to support M&S’ programme to become the world’s most sustainable retailer1 by 2015 through Plan A, its eco and ethical plan. The plan has recently been extended with 80 new commitments, which, as well as ensuring all 2.7 billion M&S products become ‘Plan A products’ with at least one sustainable quality and enabling 2,000 M&S suppliers to adopt Plan A best practice, will encourage M&S customers and employees to live ‘greener’ lifestyles.
M&S has launched several Plan A customer-led initiatives over the last three years. For example, the Oxfam Clothes Exchange has seen M&S’ customers recycle four million garments, and carrier bag charging means that over 80% of customers now bring their own bags to M&S when shopping, saving over 600 million food bags.
Source: Marks & Spencer.
