The Consumer Goods Forum Sustainable Retail Summit 2025 is in full swing at London’s 22 Bishopsgate, with industry leaders, innovators, and change makers from across the sector taking on the most pressing sustainability challenges.
This year’s event, themed ‘Sustainability in Motion,’ has already taken on issues like net-zero emissions, consumer behaviour, healthier living, and food waste.
Thursday’s talks included an early morning discussion with two CEO leaders in retail – Ken Murphy from Tesco, and Hein Schumacher from Unilever.
Scope Targets
With the title ‘Industry’s Role in Shaping a Sustainable Future’, the panel, chaired by presenter and journalist, Isabelle Kumar, made for a fascinating listen.
Schumacher opened up on Unilever’s Scope 1, 2, and 3 targets – categories used to classify a company’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – admitting one area was falling short.
“We have gaps, and I’m not sitting here and saying our roadmap for 2039 is smooth sailing,” said Schumacher on Unilever’s ambitious target of achieving net zero across the value chain within 14 years. “To achieve our 2030 target at this point, we have gaps.
"We have our Scopes 1, 2 and 3 plans that are validated, but even in the validation in our roadmap from 2028 to 2029, we have a gap - and we have a gap because we use a lot of chemicals.
February Results
"And if we cannot get to a breakthrough on replacing some of the chemical feedstock, as I said before, into other materials, then we would be at risk in getting to our target.”
He added, “I think in Scopes 1 and 2, we know what to do. We have reduced already by 73% and we’re going to publish our results on 13 February and you can see our progress in 2024, all I can is we’re really well on track right now.
"We’re going to be climate neutral by 100% in 2030 on Scope 1 and 2 – I don’t see a gap there, we’re going to make it.
“Scope 3, this is a tough journey and we’re going to have gaps, but I acknowledge them – we’re talking to many to resolve, and we believe ultimately we can get there but there’s more work to do.”
Fighting Food Waste
With more than a $1 trillion lost on food waste globally, Murphy spoke how just 7% of this figure in the food waste supply chain relates to retailer distribution, with more than 70% of food waste happening in the home, while another 20-25% at the farm/production stage.
“That’s the uncomfortable truth and the bit that’s harder for us to manage,” he said in relation to the amount of food waste in households.
“In terms of what Tesco is doing, Tesco has done an awful lot of work again with suppliers to reduce the time from the farm to the to the store.
“It has meant improving cold life by one, two, and in some cases, three days.
New Techniques
"We've done a lot of work on food handling, in terms of making sure we take care of the food the whole way through the supply chains, so it's in good shape.
"We've developed partnerships with people like ready meals suppliers so that food, that is perfectly good but doesn't look pretty, gets pushed into the ready meal supply chain instead of the store, so that none of it is wasted.”
Another area of food waste Tesco is working on includes the Black Soldier Fly, which can be used to create protein used as an alternative to soy animal feed, by putting unwanted food at the very beginning of the chain.
“Things like Black Soldier Fly is how much of that food waste can we effectively feed into a kind of a circular ecosystem, such that the food waste could be fed to the flies, the flies can be fed to animals or pets, so we try and minimise the amount of loss through the system,” he said.
But he did point out some contradictions when it comes to food waste.
“We have a few contradictions in that removing plastic from things like bananas and certain vegetables and fruit reduces shelf life, so we have to fight these seemingly incompatible goals in terms of how do you reduce plastic and reduce food waste at the same time,” he observed.
Sustainable Packaging
An equally compelling panel chat came under the Sustainable Packaging in Practice title, with Julia Koskella, director of Packaging, Innovation and Reuse in SYSTEMIQ, chairing the discussion.
Bertrand Swiderski, chief sustainability officer at Carrefour, brought some toothbrushes with him to illustrate his point on a need for uniformity in thinking across the retail industry when it comes to sustainable packaging.
The toothbrushes he shows are in cardboard packaging, with no plastic, so why can’t this be the same everywhere?
“You have to start with your own brand,” he said. “If we decide in the future that toothbrushes are packed in cardboard, we have to do it.
"You don’t have to say ‘we have to do it first’ and all of that - we have to do it globally.”
Packaging Of Tomorrow
From there he produced a small cardboard box and within it is a sponge – rather a novel idea for a household item synonymous with plastic packaging, and yet, in Swiderski’s hands, it looks neat and perfectly suited to a more sustainable package.
Shampoo is the next product he tackles, holding up a soft pouch with shampoo.
“Everywhere in the world, shampoos are the same but in the future it won’t be like that,” he said referring to his shampoo package with no bottle or hard plastic packaging in sight.
“You will have a dispenser at home, or a nice shampoo bottle at home, and you will refill the shampoo and buy this [he holds up the pouch] and it will be cheaper, it will be bigger, and then you refill at home.”
For more information on the CGF Sustainable Retail Summit, see www.theconsumergoodsforum.com/events/sustainable-retail-summit
