Richard Walker iceland

Source: Iceland

Walker has consistently used his high-profile position to champion environmental issues

Iceland MD Richard Walker has been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

The supermarket boss has received an OBE for services to business and the environment.

Walker has consistently used his high-profile position to champion environmental issues, including plastic pollution as well as deforestation linked to palm oil.

Last year, in his book The Green Grocer, he set out advice for businesses to be more sustainable.

Walker credited Iceland’s 30,000 staff for the award.

“I am genuinely amazed and hugely honoured to be included in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in this very special Platinum Jubilee year,” he said.

“While I am naturally very proud to be selected for an honour, I know that it really has a much broader significance as official recognition of the truly heroic efforts that all my 30,000 colleagues at Iceland have played in feeding the nation throughout the last two testing years of the Covid pandemic.

“I very much look forward to accepting the award on their behalf.”

Elsewhere in the honours, FDF CEO Karen Betts received an OBE for services to international trade, thanks to her work in her former role at the Scotch Whisky Association.

Betts was CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association from 2017 to 2021 and took a leading role in lobbying both the UK and US governments for the removal of punitive tariffs on scotch whisky.

Jane Shaw, co-founder of The Felix Project, received an OBE for services to the community in London. The Felix Project – London’s biggest surplus food redistribution group – is named in honour of Jane Shaw’s son Felix, who died from meningitis in 2014 aged 14.