Pret-A-Manger was founded in London in 1986 by college friends, Sinclair and Julian, who made sandwiches avoiding the chemicals, additives and preservatives common to so much of the 'prepared' and 'fast' food on the market today. Pret is a private company with about 295 shops worldwide at the moment, most of them are in the UK.

Pret is committed to reducing both carbon and water usage. In order to achieve this they are benchmarking stores to fully understand their electricity consumption, researching and implementing equipment changes to improve energy efficiency and instigating behavioural changes to drive down wasteful practices.

Pret is also part of The Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme. They are working with an organisation called Waterscan in order to reduce water usage, recently saving in excess of 140,000 litres of water by installing water hippos in staff and customer toilets and ensuring that all new shops are fitted with the latest water saving equipment such as aerated taps, timers on urinals and water efficient dish washers.
The Pret Charity Run operates a fleet of LPG vans that deliver over 12,000 fresh meals to numerous shelters for the homeless in London every week, in total, donating over 2.4 million products to charities for the homeless across the UK every year. This prevents up to 250 tonnes of food from ending up in landfill.

Pret is committed to using packaging that is as environmentally friendly as possible. All packaging must be made from accredited sustainable sources, or from recycled material and be fully recyclable. Pret launched their recycling scheme in 2008, which utilises a combination of recycling facilities, refuse derived fuel facilities and composting.

Pret has long supported developing countries through the sale of such products as ethically sourced coffee and fair trade mangoes but these are always shipped rather than air freighted. The environmental impact is lessened and farmers still supported. Whilst they continue to avoid air freighting unless it's absolutely necessary, they will always try to balance and consider all sustainability impacts, environmental, social and economic when selecting products.

All meat and dairy produce is farmed to the standards of British Farm Assured and all chickens are now bred in the UK to the Higher Welfare standard. The hens have 20% more space than the industry standard and in recognition Pret won a Good Chicken Award from Compassion in World Farming for their commitment to launching British Higher Welfare Chicken.

Pret is a partner of Forum For The Future, a leading sustainable development charity and a member of the London Mayor’s Green500 programme.

For more details please visit http://www.pret.co.uk/.