Retail

There is a need to work together to combat the green challenges that the retail sector faces, from the largest stores to small chains, on the high street and online. Retailers must come together to find collective, practical solutions to the challenge of reducing carbon, working with suppliers and consumers to deliver net zero via five pathways:

• Putting greenhouse gas data at the core of business decision-making
• Operating efficient sites powered by renewable energy
• Moving to low carbon logistics
• Sustainable sourcing
• Helping employees and customer to live low carbon lifestyles.

The BRC’s Climate Action Roadmap is the retail industry’s commitment to deliver net zero in their own operations and the products they sell by 2040. The retail industry will be serving a UK population of over 70 million people and shaping net zero supply chains across the world. The Climate Action Roadmap has the support of the vast majority of UK retailers.

Retail cannot deliver emissions reduction alone. The BRC’S Climate Action Roadmap includes clear asks of the government, for a policy environment that supports the transition to low carbon retail and sets a level playing field to ensure good practice across the industry.

While scope 1 and scope 2 emissions can be confidently measured (major retailers are now required to disclose these figures in their annual reporting), scope 3 presents a greater challenge as methodologies and boundaries vary and data can be limited. Increasingly, investors demand a high degree of visibility on climate risk. This is a global issue; there is a need to scale to influence and change global supply chains. BRC is an accelerator partner for the UN’s Race to Zero campaign and its roadmap has now been adopted by US and Australian retailers.

A significant proportion of consumers also want to do the right thing for the environment, to buy products with lower carbon footprints, to reuse and recycle. It’s up to retailers to meet that challenge by providing products that meet consumer needs, increase product longevity and provide options for reuse at the end of product life. Many retailers are now partnering with the third sector, for example to ensure redistribution of food waste and the reuse or repurposing of products such as clothing, homewares, bikes and electricals.

Retail offers a wide choice of careers across global brands and sustainability is no longer just the role of the sustainability team. Typically, roles with a ‘green’ element will include the following as retailers seek to reduce the carbon footprint of their products, supply chain and operations:

• Buying
• Sourcing
• Fleet management
• Consumer insights
• New product development
• Estate management
• Finance and legal
• Store management
• Packaging and waste
• Environmental and social governance.

The green element of a retail Buyer’s role, for example, is that they need to be mindful of a product’s carbon footprint when sourcing from a supplier, working towards the retailer’s own challenging carbon targets. Products that have too high a carbon footprint may not make the grade. Fleet Managers increasingly need to consider complex planning and expenditure around non- or low-carbon emitting transport options, and Estate Managers must strategise around stringent building energy performance requirements.

Sustainability and related roles are increasing in the sector and many of the new UK mandatory requirements around sustainability reporting, alongside investor and consumer pressure, mean that this is a career area set to grow but also increasingly become mainstream.

Sustainability career pathways in retail businesses are varied. Many people move into company-wide sustainability roles from store positions or other areas of the business, while others are sustainability professionals who have moved from other sectors.  The retail sector draws from a wide range of qualification routes including apprenticeships, graduates and career returners.

1. The BRC’s Climate Action Roadmap
2. Gov.uk: The UKs carbon footprint