Corporate Responsibility

Welcome to WH Smith PLC’s 2009 Corporate Responsibility site.

This year, economic conditions have created an unprecedented environment for retailers. Throughout these challenging times, environmental and social issues continue to be a focus of the public’s agenda. Climate change, sustainable forest sourcing and the conditions of factory workers remain public concerns. Effective management of these issues continues to be important to our business and our commitment to Corporate Responsibility (CR) remains strong. We operate a long-established programme to embed CR throughout our business, and believe that this approach to CR enables us to manage our social and environmental impacts, as well as the related risks and opportunities.

This report outlines the progress we have made during 2008/09 towards meeting the objectives we set last year. We define our responsibility into four areas: Responsibility in the marketplace, Environmental management, Workplace practice, and Community Impact. During the year, we have made progress in each aspect of our programme.

This year, we reduced our energy consumption, supporting better management of our carbon footprint and helping to reduce operating costs. We also reduced the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the transportation of our products to High Street stores. We are continuing to look for innovative ways to promote further environmental and operational efficiencies in our transport and logistics system. In addition, significant progress was made in our sustainable sourcing programme; and our community programme continues to grow, offering further support to the local communities in which we work. We recognise that there is still more to do and that our approach to CR must evolve. As such, we work to ensure that our programme remains relevant to the business strategy and provides a positive contribution to communities.

We are always working to improve our CR performance, and in doing so we aim to benchmark our programme against other leading UK companies. The annual Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index provides such an opportunity and, this year, we were delighted to retain the Platinum ranking.

Environmental and social issues have become a permanent part of the economic landscape. At WHSmith we will continue to manage our impact on society and the environment, while also exploring opportunities within CR to enhance our business performance.