Sustainable Procurement News

Amazon has unveiled Climate Pledge Friendly, a new program to help shoppers find sustainable products. The Climate Pledge Friendly label will appear on more than 25,000 products to show that they have one or more of 19 distinct sustainability certifications, such as reducing the carbon footprint of shipments to customers.

Three of Kroger's new sustainability commitments as part of the company's 2020 ESG report include: 

Sustainable packaging: For all Our Brands products, Kroger will improve packaging by 2030 in the following ways.

- Complete a baseline product packaging footprint to fully understand current packaging impacts.

- Seek to achieve 100% recyclable, compostable and/or reusable packaging for Our Brands products.
- Increase recycled content in packaging so that the Kroger Our Brands portfolio collectively contains at least 10% recycled content in packaging.
- Reduce unnecessary packaging.
Increase awareness among Kroger customers about how to properly manage Our Brands product packaging at end of life.                
Greenhouse Gas Reduction: Kroger commits to reduce its absolute enterprise-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030, from a 2018 base year.

No-Deforestation Commitment: Kroger is committed to eliminating tropical deforestation in the raw materials and products it sources into Kroger Manufacturing facilities and into its fresh meat case by 2025.

An Australian retailer has launched what it believes to be the nation’s first refillable beauty outlet, with the firm stating that the refillable revolution traditionally dominated by food and household supplies is set to become more common for cosmetics.

The U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol is a knowledge-sharing platform and partnership for the entire cotton supply chain. It offers brands and retailers better access to the cotton data that they need to be more sustainable.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit as the global fashion industry seemed to be correcting its course towards a sustainable future.

Adidas, like many large firms, has invested heavily in sustainability practices across its supply chains and driven sustainability — and thus has seen a 52 percent reduction in CO2 emissions in 2019. Newer, smaller brands such as Reformation drive better industry practices by placing sustainability at the core of its business — committing that 75 percent of all materials are natural, renewable or recycled.

This is the first step towards an extended producer responsibility (EPR) framework for packaging waste that the Singapore aims to roll out by 2025. It will require companies to take responsibility for the life cycle of packaging they produce.

The country’s largest supermarket chain has started preparing for mandatory packaging reporting. FairPrice Group has set up a team that is able to work with suppliers to gather the necessary information, and recently received the template for reporting from Singapore’s National Environment Agency, said its group chief executive Seah Kian Peng.

Amazon.com contributed more greenhouse gas emissions last year than some big competitors in retail, logistics and technology, but less than rival Walmart Inc. and the world’s biggest energy companies, highlighting the growing scale and diverse businesses of the conglomerate.

The disclosure by Amazon of its 2018 carbon emissions, 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, including purchased electricity and indirect emissions, came Sept. 19, when the company committed to powering all of its business operations by renewable energy sources by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality a decade later.

Amazon’s emissions exceed the reported totals of UPS Inc. and FedEx Corp. as well as Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Target Corp. in data compiled by CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project. Amazon’s total is 38% less than rival Walmart, the group said.

When companies set targets to get to zero emissions, they often aim for “net zero,” using carbon-offset projects like tree planting to make up for the fact that they haven’t fully stopped polluting. A new goal from Walmart goes further: By 2040, the company plans to reach zero emissions across its global operations without using any offsets. In other words, it’s aiming for real zero, not net zero.

As fashion brands and retailers use the silver lining of COVID-19 to strengthen their sustainability commitments, the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol can help them demonstrate their sourcing and supply chain commitments to meet customer demand.

When shopping online, consumers are able to see a lot of information about a product. There’s the product description and specifications of an item. For a bottle of perfume, the listing would declare the fluid ounces and describe the scent. A piece of clothing would show the material makeup and available sizes. A page for a bookshelf would have information about the dimensions. And of course, all of these would display the cost.

But even with so much information at the ready, it is still rare to see details about the impact the product has on the climate or the chemical makeup of an item. The Environmental Defense Fund is calling for change.

"You have this greater real estate available to share this information about products right on the product page, just like you would the size of a product or colors or product reviews and you have the ability to tell more of the sustainability story, because you essentially have endless shelf space online," said Boma Brown-West, senior manager of EDF+Business at the Environmental Defense Fund, the arm of EDF focused on corporate sustainability.

As apparel brands and retailers rebuild their post-pandemic supply chains, now is the perfect time to rethink how they can embed sustainability into their development, sourcing and distribution decisions, says Mark Burstein, president at NGC Software. 

Following Walmart CEO’s commitment to sourcing 20 key commodities more sustainably by 2025, the nationwide superstore has shifted its focus to beef.

CEO Doug McMillon addressed that the chain aims to to source beef products more sustainably by 2025. With main priorities being soil health, animal welfare and responsible use of antibiotics. 

McMillon also stated that the company will focus on transparency, new partnerships and collaboration with customers and suppliers.

Tesco has suspended a supplier and launched an investigation after footage emerged of animals being maltreated at a farm producing goat’s milk.

Animal rights group Surge claimed it obtained footage of goats at St Helen’s Farm in east Yorkshire being hit by workers, having their tails twisted and being pulled by their ears and legs.

The abuse took place as the animals were placed on a conveyor belt to have their hooves trimmed, a process necessary because they are kept inside their whole lives and their hooves do not wear down naturally, said Surge.

Europe’s biggest e-commerce fashion retailer Zalando has just committed to ensuring that all the brands that it carries will meet sustainability targets. It will do so by making the competition of a Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s (SAC) new Higg Index survey mandatory for all its brands – including big fashion names such as Calvin Klein and Alexander McQueen. The multi-brand retailer has set the deadline of all relevant data collection by 2023.

Ahold Delhaize is moving up in one of the most prestigious environmental, social and governance indices.

The Zaandam, Netherlands-based retail conglomerate improved its score on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index by 14 points compared with its 2019 score, receiving 83 out of 100. This score is well above the industry average of 31 points. 2020 marks the fifth consecutive year that the company has been ranked among industry leaders. The index is considered the gold standard for measuring corporate sustainability and its family of indices serves as a benchmark for investors who integrate sustainability considerations into their portfolios.

After decades advocating for business that prioritizes workers and the environment alongside profitability, it is obvious to me that any efforts to pivot to address changing consumer demand and market uncertainty will be futile if workers are treated as commodities or taken for granted.

UK retailer Asda has announced that it has commenced a test run of its ‘sustainability store’ in Middleton, Leeds.

The outlet aims to help shoppers reduce, reuse and recycle with ease and the retailer expects to remove around one million pieces of plastic annually through this store.

Asda has partnered with some of the UK’s most popular household brands, such as PG Tips, Vimto, Kellogg’s, Radox and Persil, to offer sustainable versions of popular products.

Walmart and Schneider Electric have announced a new collaboration that will provide increased access to renewable energy for Walmart’s US-based suppliers. The initiative, termed the “Gigaton PPA (GPPA) Program,” is designed to educate Walmart suppliers about renewable energy purchases and accelerate renewable energy adoption by participating suppliers through aggregate power purchase agreements (PPA).

SodaStream-branded reverse vending machines are now being installed in retail stores across the European Union and the US, and machines are already in operation in Sweden and France.

CO2 canisters are utilised by SodaStream machines to make sparkling water or other carbonated beverages. The goal of the partnership is to make cylinder exchange more efficient for both retailers and SodaStream customers, and ultimately increase canister recycling for reuse.

The companies also claim that the solutions are ideal for retailers in a post-Covid world, as they aid social distancing protocols as customers no longer need to go to customer service points to return used CO2 cylinders.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer has eliminated soya from the production of all its milk as part of its commitment to end deforestation in its supply chain.

Amazon is launching a new environmental program called Climate Pledge Friendly that will label certain products that meet one of 19 certifications for sustainability. The goal is to help climate-conscious consumers make a better decision about whether to buy one product over another by letting them know when a brand has made an effort to reduce its carbon footprint. Amazon says more than 25,000 products should now display the program’s label.

The Kroger Co. recently released its 2020 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report, saying the grocery chain will reduce GHG emissions 30% by 2030, among other goals.

Kroger’s 2020 report leads with an updated materiality assessment, outlining the ESG topics most meaningful to the company’s key stakeholders. The in-depth assessment, conducted in partnership with an external consultancy in early 2020, resulted in an updated list of priority topics.

The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) has launched the Coalition of Action on Food Waste, which aims to reduce the per capita global food loss to half at retailer and consumer level.

The CEO-led initiative comprises 14 members, representing the world’s largest retailers and manufacturers.

Members include Ahold Delhaize, Barilla, Bel Group, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Majid Al Futtaim, McCain Foods, Merck Animal Health, Metro AG, Migros Ticaret, Nestlé, Sainsbury, Tesco, and Walmart.

The initiative is sponsored at the CGF Board level by Dave Lewis, group chief executive of Tesco, and Max Koeune, the president and CEO of McCain Foods, the CGF added.

The steering committee of the Coalition is co-chaired by Francisco Cordero of Kellogg Company and Brittni Furrow of Ahold Delhaize USA.

Asos has unveiled new commitments for its third-party brands after Boohoo’s Leicester scandal ravaged the fashion retail sector last month.

The fashion ecommerce has asked brands to sign the Transparency Pledge, which will require them to publicly and regularly declare their manufacturing supply chain.

The pledge launched in 2016 by nine charities including Human Rights Watch and the Clean Clothes Campaign.

The online fashion retailer Boohoo is launching an independent review of its UK supply chain after allegations that some factories in Leicester that sell clothes to Boohoo paid workers below the minimum wage and failed to protect them from the coronavirus outbreak.