Find out more about Force For Good
We believe we have a responsibility to help people live and work well. Our sustainability programme, ‘Force for Good’ aims to ensure we have a positive impact on all of our stakeholders and the world around us. Split into three pillars; Opportunity, Community and Responsibility, we’ve made great progress so far and have set long-term strategic targets to continue on our journey.
Our three pillars
Select one below to find out more:
Opportunity
Opportunity is all about the people in our business, all 35,000 of them in the UK and Germany. Our Opportunity pillar has 3 key commitments; championing inclusivity across the organisation and improving diversity, delivering industry leading training and development schemes and making sure team member wellbeing is considered in everything we do.
Community
It’s crucial that we go above and beyond for the communities we are a part of. The community pillar of our strategy focuses on giving back, whether it’s through volunteering, fundraising for our charity partner or making sure we’re responsible for the wellbeing of our guests through a great night’s sleep and providing healthy and delicious food.
Responsibility
The Responsibility pillar focuses on doing everything we can to support the world around us. Through driving down our carbon emissions to support global efforts against climate change, reducing the amount of plastics in the business, ensuring animal welfare standards, or collaborating with our global supply chains to respect the human rights of workers, we have a responsibility to do business in the right way.
Opportunity is all about the people in our business, all 35,000 of them in the UK and Germany. Our Opportunity pillar has 3 key commitments; championing inclusivity across the organisation and improving diversity, delivering industry leading training and development schemes and making sure team member wellbeing is considered in everything we do.
It’s crucial that we go above and beyond for the communities we are a part of. The community pillar of our strategy focuses on giving back, whether it’s through volunteering, fundraising for our charity partner or making sure we’re responsible for the wellbeing of our guests through a great night’s sleep and providing healthy and delicious food.
The Responsibility pillar focuses on doing everything we can to support the world around us. Through driving down our carbon emissions to support global efforts against climate change, reducing the amount of plastics in the business, ensuring animal welfare standards, or collaborating with our global supply chains to respect the human rights of workers, we have a responsibility to do business in the right way.
Looking to the future
We've been recognised for what we've achieved as a business this year but it doesn't stop here. We are committed to having a positive impact on the people and communities our business touches and to reducing our environmental impact. Some of our long term commitments are: - Carbon net zero by 2040 - Eliminating unnecessary single-use plastic by 2025 - Cutting food waste by 50% by 2030
We are a Force for Good
Ethical audit programme
Griffiths Family Farms – our official Egg Supplier: “We were one of the first suppliers to go through Whitbread's responsible sourcing and audit programme and we approached it with total transparency. There were a number of areas that needed addressing, but rather than issue ultimatums and demand immediate corrections, the Whitbread team worked with us, really got to understand our business and have provided great support across a number of levels over the last three years.
“We have made major investment in new personnel and operational changes throughout our business, resulting in a cultural step change… this process has had a very positive impact across our business and Whitbread have played a major supporting role.”
Synergy chargrills
In 2019 we began rolling out the award-winning Synergy chargrill to over 200 restaurants including all Beefeater and Cookhouse & Pub sites. The Synergy Grill has led to gas savings of over 20% in the impacted sites and a 10% reduction of the total gas consumption of the entire restaurant business.
Not only this, but the new grill also improves the quality of cooking, enables faster cleaning, and reduces cooking oil and waste.
Donating our surplus food waste
In 2021 we donated over 620,000 meals in this way by redirecting surplus food to charities across the country.
Through one of our charity partners FareShare this food supported over 20,000 charities and community groups in the UK supporting everyone from schools to homeless shelters to community hubs get the food the need.
Striving for BREEAM excellent
Our newly constructed UK Premier Inn and Restaurant sites are built to a minimum of BREAM very good standard, LEED platinum or EPC B and we're taking this further as we go forward to strive for BREAM Excellent where we can.
Our Hub by Premier Inn hotel at St Martins Lane in central London was the first BREAM 'Outstanding' hotel in the UK.
Removal of single use uniform packaging
With more than 30,000 team members, we have a lot of uniforms.
When looking at our plastic usage we recognised that each of our uniforms was delivered in single-use plastic wrapping. With the support of our kitchen uniform supplier, we have now removed 2 tonnes of non-recyclable, single-use plastics per annum helping us little by little to our target to eliminate all unnecessary single-use plastic by 2025.
Want to know more?
Our long-established Force for Good sustainability programme covers large aspects of our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda.
Our ESG report
