MATT JOHNSON: Can we leave a ‘small’ carbon footprint in spending frenzy?

Dec 5 2007 by Matt Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

ON YOUR marks, get set, go! Like it or not, we are once again on the starting blocks for the annual spending frenzy, which every year appears to play a larger part in the season’s festivities up and down the country.

Putting aside the extent to which December has become dominated by commercial activities, it really is an important time for many businesses, not just those in the retail sector.

The scale of supply chain planning and delivery in the coming weeks is phenomenal. Those caught up in this frenzy create levels of demand that tax logistics experts whose job it is to make sure shop shelves are full of what we want, when we want it – or, perhaps more accurately, what advertisers make us believe we want, or worse still “must have”.

Supermarkets may be no go areas for some faint-hearted shoppers in the coming weeks, but, if you do find yourself push-ing a trolley, spare a thought for the sheer scale of what’s happen-ing around you. Chances are there will be at least one lorry waiting to be unloaded on the far side of the car park, which will itself be full and congested.

And here is the beginning of a fairly large carbon footprint appearing – and that’s just where you happen to do your shopping.

Multiply the activity several thousand times to take in the rest of the country’s supermarkets and the scale begins to dawn.

The big supermarkets are among the most successful busi-nesses in the country. Nobody, regardless of their green creden-tials, can deny that.

It sometimes seems nothing can stop them, or can it?

Last Sunday, BBC Radio 4’s respected Food Programme presented one of its prize gongs to a Merseyside enterprise that really should give supermarkets food for thought.

Wirral Farmers Market was judged to be the best such market in Britain.

I have yet to visit the Wirral Farmers Market, but I have been to its website and plan a trip soon. Have a look for yourself at www.wirralfarmersmarket.co.uk

Apart from the quality and range of produce offered, it’s the way this enterprise was initiated and developed entirely by volun-teers who have played such a crucial part in efforts to regen-erate the New Ferry area of the borough that is impressive. It may not have been foremost in the minds of volunteers when they launched their venture, but I am pretty sure it’s become a viable model for others to adopt.

Since 2003, according to the market’s website, the venture has put £16,000 back into the Wirral community. In contrast, our supermarkets are accused of bulldozing their way down high streets. But who would bet against one of the big four allow-ing a farmers market in the corner of one of their car parks?

Stranger things have happened. It seems small businesses are getting it right again.

* MATT JOHNSON is chairman of Mando Group