AN INDEPENDENT supermarket has received an award at the national climate change awards.

Hisbe, in York Place, Brighton, received the Best Small Business award for its commitment to sustainability.

Ruth Anslow and Jack Simmonds, representing Hisbe, went to collect the Green Heart Hero award at the ceremony at the Houses of Parliament on Monday.

Championing zero waste, it has refill stations in the store and encourages customers to buy quantities they want by using their own containers.

Ruth Anslow said: “We are proud and grateful that Hisbe has won the Best Small Business category in the national Green Heart Hero awards.

“We’re dedicating this win to all the supermarket rebels on the journey with us towards creating a sustainable future for food and farming.

“To us, it’s crucial to challenge the current systems for producing and distributing food, because they are inefficient, wasteful and inequitable – and a significant contributor to climate change.”

The winners also included Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb. She won the Greenest Peer award for the work she has done in raising issues relating to climate change and the environment. She has engaged in a debates to raise awareness of climate change.

She said: “I was very pleased to be nominated, delighted to be shortlisted, and overwhelmed to win.

“We’ve mostly won the argument that climate change is the biggest threat to human life. Now we just need the policies to be put into action.”

The annual Green Heart Hero Awards are co-ordinated by The Climate Coalition, a group of more than 130 organisations including the Women’s Institute, CAFOD, National Trust, WWF and the RSPB, who together represent more than 15 million people nationwide.