Introduction from CEO

Welcome to our environment report 2008/09, now in its seventh year.

Whitbread has continued to evolve throughout its 250-year history. We have made the business leaner and more agile so we can stay focused on what's at our core - making everyday experiences feel special across our brands, representing value for money for all the family.

For Whitbread there is one priority, the need to stay relentlessly focused on value, and on the customer. Our vision is to be the most customer focused hospitality company in the world. And the challenge is to do this without compromising on sustainability. This priority is even more important today, as we see the economic landscape change, bringing challenging times for the whole leisure industry.

Better environmental management of our business has contributed to reducing costs and has improved our environmental footprint. We plan to build on these steps in the right direction, not only because it makes good business sense, but because it's the right thing to do. There are many examples, detailed in the following pages of this report. I would like to highlight three:

Firstly, during the year we opened our first 'green' Premier Inn hotel at Tamworth. We believe it's not only a first for Whitbread, but also for the budget hotel industry and the UK. Here we are testing exciting new environmental technologies, using it as a showcase for what can be achieved and as a basis for future investment decisions.

Secondly, we teamed up with the Rainforest Alliance to introduce more sustainable sources of coffee beans and we are proud of the lead Costa is taking as a coffee shop brand, with strong quality and ethical credentials.

Finally, we undertook some important research to understand more about how our customers and our people feel about environmental concerns and how Whitbread manages them. We received a clear mandate that they want us to do more, and we are acting on this feedback. We have used this research as the basis of a new, holistic corporate responsibility strategy.

We will measure our progress as we execute this new strategy in the same way as we always do, using our WINcard. This is our balanced scorecard, incorporating the elements of customers, people and investors. Measures for corporate responsibility feature under all three of these elements and it's critical that we engage and motivate allour stakeholders to help us achieve our goals.

Next year our reporting will change to take account of our new corporate responsibility strategy as we start on a journey that will change the way we do business, continuing to give our customers a great value experience, but one which becomes ever more sustainable.

Alan Parker, CBE
Chief Executive
Whitbread PLC
August 2009