Click on Sainsbury's website and you will find a short film of a grown man playing make believe with two little wooden figures. Click again and you willl find another man trying to book into a bee hotel. The films are quirky, surreal and fun, and there is not an actor in sight – all the people featured are Sainsbury's employees.
The films are being used by Sainsbury's as a novel way to communicate to staff, customers and other stakeholders its 20x20 Sustainability Plan, which sets out 20 targets the supermarket would like to achieve by 2020.
The film with little figures is about a range of wooden toys made from Forest Stewardship Council trees. By 2020, the company hopes to source many of its raw materials and commodities sustainably.
The bee story is about helping people understand the vital role played by pollinators in our ecosystem. Sainsbury's is the only supermarket to employ its own beekeeper and is establishing bee hotels for solitary bees at its stores. Solitary bees are very efficient pollinators and there is no fear customers will get stung: the bees are docile as they do not make honey that they need to protect.
The short films, which cover a range of complex issues from sustainable palm oil to carbon emissions, have been viewed more than 10,000 times and are one of the ways Sainsbury's is communicating its sustainability plans to staff, customers and others.
Another is the "value of values" campaign, in which consumers debated the importance of ethics and provenance in everyday products, for instance comparing Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade bananas. The campaign aims to highlight the fact that the budget crunch of recent years has not led to a values crunch.
Nicolette Fox is part of the wordworks network
The Guardian Sustainable Business Sustainability Case Studies contain articles on all the initiatives that met the criteria for the GSB Awards.
