John Lewis Partnership

The products we buy every day are often connected to landscapes across the world. From the forests that provide timber for our furniture and homes, to the rivers that support industries such as textiles, healthy ecosystems are essential for wildlife, thriving communities and resilient supply chains.  

Since 2022, we’ve been working with the John Lewis Partnership, which operates the John Lewis department stores and Waitrose supermarkets, to protect and restore nature in areas where their suppliers are based.  

Forests absorb carbon and nurture vital species. They support local communities to prosper and supply markets across the globe. But we are losing forests at an alarming rate, with an estimated 15 billion trees cut down each year.  

With the global demand for timber expected to quadruple by 2050, our forests need protecting and restoring, whilst businesses that depend on timber must make their supply chains sustainable and meet their zero-deforestation commitments.  

In India, we’re working in the Western Ghats Nilgiris Landscape, one of the world’s most critical biodiversity hotspots. Its many rivers sustain rich ecosystems and rare species such as tigers and the lion-tailed macaque, while providing essential ecosystem services to millions of people and businesses. Within this landscape are the Bhavani and Noyyal rivers which support wildlife, communities and key industries such as textile production and is a sourcing region for John Lewis for a number of different textile products.  

However, rapid urbanisation and intensive human activity have placed immense pressure on these river systems, leading to pollution, habitat fragmentation, over-extraction, all of which are further intensified by climate change.  

Since 2022, we’ve been working with the John Lewis Partnership across the world to protect and restore ecosystems which their business, suppliers, and local communities depend on.

From 2022 – 2026, the John Lewis Partnership supported our innovative Wholescape approach in Norfolk - a key UK sourcing region for Waitrose. By working directly with local farmers and conservation groups, the partnership supported the development of sustainability plans across 6,000 hectares of farmland and connected 600 farmers to support collaborative, farmer-led nature recovery across the county. Read more about the impact of our partnership here.

So far in South Africa, the project has established pilot projects in three nurseries, supporting capacity of local people to implement nature-based solutions. Nearly 40,000 indigenous plants have been grown to be planted in as part of habitat restoration, as well as growing vegetable seedlings to distribute to rural households, farm schools and an orphanage to improve food security. The project also supported the clearing of water-thirsty alien invasive species and repurposed the biomass as building materials, allowing native species to thrive, ensuring a dependable supply of water and helping support livelihoods of businesses, including Waitrose Foundation farms and individuals who depend on the river catchment.

In 2021 Waitrose signed WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature alongside four other UK supermarkets, with a pledge to halve the environmental footprint of the average UK shopping basket by 2030.  

The signatories have committed to report their performance annually to WWF against metrics linked to climate, deforestation, nature, packaging, food waste and more, and publicly report on the actions being taken to reduce their impact.