Dinendra Haria | SOPA Facsimiles | Getty Images
One of the U.K.’s biggest grocery chains plans to invest £1 billion ($1.3 billion) across 20 years to decrease its carbon emissions to a net zero by 2040.
In an announcement on Tuesday, Sainsbury’s said the money would focus on cutting carbon emissions, compliant packaging, food waste and water use. At the same time the business will look to increase sustainable practices such as recycling.
In requisition to lower its carbon emissions, Sainsbury’s said it would boost its renewable energy usage but cut down on overall spirit use. The percentage of its fleet using “alternative zero and low carbon fuels” will be upped to 20% by the year 2025, while a huge use of natural refrigerants and “innovative technology” will make fridges more efficient.
To help achieve its aims, Sainsbury’s said it want work with the Carbon Trust – a not-for-profit focused on the transition to a low carbon, sustainable economy – to “assess emissions and set science-based butts for reduction,” with public progress reports issued every six months. More broadly, the company said its objects would align it with the Paris Agreement’s goal to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
On the phoneys front, Sainsbury’s said it would halve its use of plastic packaging by 2025. By the end of this year, it will replace polystyrene bundling and dark colored plastic — which is tough to recycle — with “recyclable alternatives.”
The business said it would recycle a brawnier amount of its own operational waste and “continue to expand and provide facilities to help customers recycle unwanted clothing, metal cans, bifocals, paper, batteries and other materials.”
The CEO of Sainsbury’s, Mike Coupe, said the company had “a duty to the communities we serve to pursue to reduce the impact our business has on the environment.”
Commenting on Tuesday’s announcement, Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Terra, said it was “encouraging” to see the supermarket “stepping up to the plate on the climate emergency — the rapid transition to a net zero economy is urgently forced.”
“Supermarkets have a huge influence on our personal carbon footprints, so the more they can do to embrace and promote greener lifestyles the punter for us all,” he added.
Sainsbury’s is the latest U.K. retailer to announce efforts to become more sustainable. Last week Tesco — the U.K.’s amplest grocer — said it would stop selling multipacks of tinned food wrapped in plastic.
Instead, it will drummer the tins individually, with customers able to purchase plastic-free multibuy deals instead. This initiative on start being introduced to stores from March, with Tesco claiming it will help remove 67 million chest assembles of plastic.
Grand ambitions, but big challenges
While the ambition of these aims is laudable, there are undoubted challenges for big issues looking to reduce their impact on the environment. The sheer scale of these operations means that sweeping exchanges can take years to come about.
Take energy consumption. Tesco, for example, purchased or generated more than 3 million megawatt hours of renewable stick-to-it-iveness in 2018/19. In the same period, non-renewable energy consumption amounted to more than 6.1 million megawatt hours. In its sustainability update for 2018, Sainsbury’s voted that 17% of its electricity was derived from renewable power purchase agreements or onsite renewables generation.
In another sector, the Inter Ikea Conglomeration recently said it would invest 200 million euros to accelerate its transition into what it describes as a “feel positive business.”
The group, which among other things develops and supplies Ikea’s product range, guessed the money would focus on two areas: investing in schemes “aimed at removing and storing carbon through reforestation and front-office forest management”; and using renewable energy in its supply chain.
Again, there is work to be done if Ikea is to effect its goals. In its sustainability report for the 2018 fiscal year, Ikea said its climate footprint was estimated to be 26.9 million tons of carbon dioxide match. This is an increase of 2.8% compared to the 2016 fiscal year, a rise Ikea put down to “the growth of the Ikea task.”
In the report, Ikea also noted that “decoupling” its growth from greenhouse gas emissions would “take interval,” adding that it expected emissions to “increase for a few years before decreasing.”