M&S joins WWF Seafood Charter to promote sustainable fishing
Marks & Spencer has become the first UK company to sign the WWF’s Seafood Charter, helping to promote responsible fishing. The retailer has taken out full page newspaper ads to raise consumer awareness of the issue.
Working together, the WWF and M&S will help evaluate the sustainability of the fish products and fish-feed in its supply chains, and will identify and develop more sustainable sources of fish sold in stores.
In the ads, created by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, M&S says they have had a sustainable fishing policy for over a decade, and now wants to ensure that by 2012, all its wild fish come from the most sustainable sources possible.
It adds: “It’s not us fishing for compliments; we just think it’s the right thing to do.”
WWF says M&S has also backed its plans for a network of marine reserves across the North Sea, needed to help rebuild populations of many threatened fish species and protect their habitats, and is funding research into the huge problem of discarded fish.
The work is part of M&S’s ongoing Plan A campaign, which has been running since 2007. It will also involve the two parties working together to raise awareness of the environmental benefits of eating sustainably sourced, local fish.
Under Plan A, M&S has also been working with Oxfam to launch the M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange. Last week, Marks & Spencer lined up with Sainsbury’s, Unilever and other companies to promote its commitment to sustainable palm oil production.
M&S is also running print ads to promote its commitment to greener packing.
