Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Tesco: oh you are naughty

I'm sure you are all avid readers of the Harwich and Manningtree Standard. I know I get all itchy if I've not seen it for a couple of days. Anyway, last week they had a wonderful piece exposing the naughty, naughty practices of the Tesco megalith.

I'll let the Standard take up the story;

"Tesco staff have been photographed by residents over the past few weeks unloading goods from HGV lorries into smaller “less CO2” emission vans in the back roads of two industrial estates in Station Road, Lawford, in order to deliver the goods in the smaller vans to the Tesco Express store in Manningtree High Street.

"The store have been using the smaller van to transport goods to the store after promising residents they wouldn’t use the larger HGV in the town after a campaign in 2005.

"Barry Hammick, of Constable Close, Lawford said: “Over the last few weeks it has come to our attention that the "less CO2" emission lorries used by Tesco are in fact only doing the final half a mile or so of the journey to the Tesco Express in Manningtree.

"Mr Hammick, a member of Tesco opposition group, Stour Community First, added:”This means they are in fact running an articulated lorry as well as the low emission vehicle to make deliveries which is hardly environmently friendly.”...

[A Tesco spokesperson said]: “It is not best practise to unload goods in an area other that a designated Tesco loading area."

"Michael Coultharde-Steer, chairman of Stour Community First, said: “The fact that these smaller lorries have “less CO2” printed in large letters on the side when in fact they not saving any CO2 at all is laughable and it just goes to show we are right not to accept what companies tell us.

"“At the end of the day, it is all about public relations and sales. If they only have the one low omission lorry anyway that suggests to me they are just simply paying lip service to the idea.”
You have to admire their chutzpah don't you? It makes you wonder if they've ever told any other lies... no probably not, big business would not lie to us. Would they?

3 comments:

Joe Otten said...

Strange - I would have thought that running fewer larger vans would be more CO2 efficient than running more smaller ones.

Perhaps residents objected to the larger vans for reasons other than CO2 efficiency, and Tesco are minimising costs and emissions by using larger vans where they still can.

Jim Jepps said...

Well the article itself is on the dishonesty of Tesco rather than anything else but there is a point to be made about Tesco transportation more generally.

Tesco run on a just in time system for their stores so that even small stores can be getting four to five deliveries a day. There are upsides to this - of course - but there are two key problems with it.

Firstly it means traffic problems. In a small community blooming great lorries going up and down all day everyday can cause real hastles.

Secondly it means unnecessary travel, which is bad for the environment. Those big trucks were able to unload into the little one because there was clearly space in the little one to take the goods needed. That means the big truck, which is bigger than necessary, but making a number of trips a day to the same store.

Supermarkets themselves are extremely bad environmentally because of the way they organise their deliveries and goods. Whilst I wouldn't want to micromanage Tesco(!) I think the local residents have a right to be pissed off that they'd been decieved and that Tesco's attempts to look environmentally friendly are pretty thin.

bob said...

On another Tesco topic, have you seen this from Unite:
http://www.unitetheunion.com/news__events/latest_news/calling_notice_unite_union_in.aspx?lang=en-gb