Applegreen is Ireland’s leading roadside retailer with 124 stores across the country. Applegreen launched a comprehensive sustainability strategy, Drive Change, to ensure sustainability is embedded in everything they do.
At Applegreen sustainability is embedded in everything they do to drive change and leave a positive legacy for future generations.
Applegreen's sustainability strategy Drive Change, supports their commitments to be Net Zero in their own operations by 2030 and carbon neutral across all scope 3 emissions by 2050.
A key concern for Applegreen was communicating what sustainability means to both their employees and customers. By creating a standalone framework called Drive Change, Applegreen have consolidated their approach to ESG across the business using language applicable to day to day operations.
Activities implemented & benefits from the initiative
Applegreen identified four important pillars for the alignment of activities to the Drive Change framework;
- Enabling a Low Carbon Future
- Nurturing our People
- Customers & Communities
- Offering Cleaner Energy
Using the four pillars of the Drive Change strategy, Applegreen were able to collate the various initiatives being undertaken across the business into one place and communicate to their colleagues in a tangible way how they were already embedding sustainability in their day to day operations.
Applegreen then captured initiatives such as the planting of 300,000 native Irish trees, continuing to support the Applegreen Charitable fund which has donated €5 million to date to charities and local communities, increased awareness of Biodiversity in our communities through the BioDive campaign all of which tie back to the Customers & Communities pillar while the expansion of their Graduate Program is routed in Nurturing our People. The launch of a TetraPak water bottles will Enable a Low Carbon Future and continued investment in EV charging demonstrates their commitment to Offering Cleaner Energy.
The key benefit here was demonstrating to their colleagues, who may have been unsure of what sustainability would mean for them, that the small actions they were already doing contributed to a low carbon future and that by continuing to embed sustainability in day to day operations, there are multiple opportunities to drive change and positively impact our local communities.
Visit https://drivechange.applegreen.com/ for more information.