Supermarkets’ failure to meet climate and nature targets “isn’t just bad for business – it’s a recipe for disaster”.
Coming from Dave Lewis, former Tesco CEO and now WWF chair, that statement is not a controversial take – it’s the painful truth.
The food and agriculture industry is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming and a new report by the World Wildlife Fund has found that UK supermarkets are ”a long way off” their sustainability journey and are “highly likely” to miss their own climate targets.
Retailers, the NGO said, were still “falling far short of what’s needed”.
The depressing findings in this year’s WWF ‘What’s in Store for the Planet 2024’ report revealed retailers’ progress as they work towards their commitments to halving the environmental impact of the average UK weekly shop by 2030.
The annual research offers an in-depth review of the UK grocery market’s impact across the seven key areas of climate, deforestation and conversion, agriculture, marine, diets, food waste and packaging.Turns out, retailers are on course to miss crucial pledges across all of those areas, including some particularly urgent ones, such as making sure ag-food commodities don’t come from deforested land by 2025.
Failure to act
Meanwhile, the sustainability leaders who understand the urgent and vital need for collective action are leaving the sector en masse due to that failure to act.
Several industry insiders and whistleblowers have spoken to The Grocer about the growing frustrations among sustainability professionals in the food and retail industry in the face of systemic inaction. They’re tired, discouraged and feel unsupported.
This wasn’t an easy conversation for the professionals involved. They spoke candidly about the challenges at stake and what exactly needs to change. Some asked to have their identities concealed because they were conscious of the “blame-game” that would ensue – when, indeed, the main message everyone was keen to get out was that this issue pertains to the sector as a whole, rather than one company or individual.
This new WWF report not only validates that feeling, but offers a grim echo of what many opened up about. In a particularly striking conversation, one senior sustainability source said: “For those of us that have been around long enough, there is a genuine deep-rooted feeling that this is not fixable any more.”
A broken system?
It forces one to wonder – is the system well and truly broken? Is progress, rapid and at scale, actually achievable? Are companies just putting their blinkers on and hoping the next CEO will fix it? What role does the consumer and government play in all of this?
In the hours since the publication of The Grocer’s news story, we’ve seen dozens of sustainability experts across the industry engage in candid and earnest conversations on social media. They’ve been asking where sustainability teams should sit, the importance of due diligence and compliance versus implementing strategy, the dynamics between climate experts and commercial colleagues, and what a realistic sustainable future looks like for the food and retail sector. Answers, though, are less forthcoming.
There is still a case for optimism.
“The food system has the people and ingenuity to transform, now it needs the courage and commitment to get on with it,” says former M&S sustainability leader Mike Barry.
From witnessing the bravery and resilience of sustainability experts still trying to move the dial forward despite all the headwinds, it’s impossible to not wholeheartedly agree.
Our hope is that their voices reach those in power, and we urge leadership in business and government to take their concerns seriously and their solutions to heart.
As Barry points out: “We have to act now, while we still have control over our future destiny.”
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