Five of the UK’s biggest supermarkets have agreed to join forces to speed up their work on tackling climate change with suppliers in the next year. The pledge comes as WWF announced its goal of halving the environmental impact of food shopping by 2030 as it warned there was an “urgent need for accelerated action” from the sector and greater support from the UK Government, especially in areas such as agricultural supply chains and including removing deforestation from food production.
In response to the report, the chief executives of Co-op, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose announced they would support their suppliers to adopt science-based targets to reach net-zero climate emissions by 2050. They have also agreed to work with Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) charity to develop and deliver an “ambitious” climate action programme for the grocery retail sector with the aim of halving their climate emissions by 2030.
WWF chief executive Tanya Steele said: “Nature is in freefall and we know 60% of global biodiversity loss and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the food system. Shoppers want to know that their purchases are not contributing to the destruction of our planet, so we urge other supermarkets to join the five who have committed to our goal to halve the environmental impact of our food shopping by 2030.
