Tesco chief pledges to cut carbon footprint

The boss of supermarket giant Tesco has pledged to take action to reduce the company's carbon footprint and do more to help the environment.

In a speech published by the Guardian newspaper, chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said that businesses need to "act now" and that they "must go green".

Discussing the challenges ahead, Sir Leahy said that research shows the group's carbon footprint consisted of 4.47 million tonnes of CO2 in 2007.

This, he said, is now being tackled with a number of ambitious targets being set for the years to come.

Ways in which Tesco hope to achieve these goals range from ensuring vans are always fully loaded to using better insulation in store.

He added that it was important to encourage customers to go green with incentives such as offering cheap energy efficient light bulbs and providing them with reusable bags.

"If retailers help customers, customers will go green," Sir Leahy said.

"Billions of [green] purchases send a signal to cut carbon right down the supply chain and right through the economy."