NGO Client
WWF
WWF WANT TO HALVE THE ENVIRNOMENTAL IMPACT OF UK SHOPPING BASKETS BY 2030, AND WE ARE HELPING THEM TO ACHIEVE THIS
WWF commissioned Eunomia to support its WWF Basket initiative to halve environmental impact of grocery shopping. We devised data collection templates to monitor and evaluate info from retailers.
SUMMARY
WWF is the world’s largest international conservation organisation operating in nearly 100 countries. As part of a flagship sustainability project, WWF commissioned Eunomia to support its WWF Basket initiative, which has an ambitious goal of halving the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets by 2030.
To monitor progress towards this goal, WWF had identified seven areas where impact should be reduced – Climate, Deforestation and Conversation, Diets, Agriculture, Marine, Food Waste, and Packaging. Eunomia was commissioned to turn this concept into a working system that could collect data from retailers and measure progress in each area annually.
Eunomia provided a dedicated team of technical experts, engagement and data specialists to tackle this challenge. The team devised a data collection template, supported retailers in sharing and cleaning the data, and then analysed data to assess retailers’ progress towards targets such as reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions across all scopes, moving towards deforestation and conversion-free supply chains, and minimising food waste. The team worked closely with WWF’s experts – throughout each phase of the project, to check the technical robustness of the data being collected.
The success of this project has enabled WWF to increase the visibility and understanding of the environmental impact of British Food retailers, while also providing an incentive to help these retailers improve their reporting against each basket metric, understand their impacts and ultimately enhance their environmental performance. It also has helped to understand the gaps in data and scale of the challenge in obtaining information across supply chains. The database and reporting framework that Eunomia created stands up to robust industry scrutiny and can be easily adapted by businesses to include other supply chains.
The global climate and nature emergency has given many businesses, including food retailers, a much-needed wake up call. Transforming the global food system will be key to averting the climate crisis and catastrophic biodiversity loss – and in achieving this, food retailers have a critical role to play.
After all, 50% of all habitable land on the planet is used for agriculture, 30% of human-made GHGs are caused by food production, 70% of the planet’s accessible water is used for agriculture, and 60% of global biodiversity loss is caused by the food system. [Source: WWF]
Food retailers can influence both producers and consumers and therefore have a critical role to play in this transformation. Retail businesses are increasingly having to implement more sustainable supply chain strategies to mitigate their environmental impact and decarbonise in accordance with the latest Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) regulations.
WWF sought to provide the UK food retail sector with a long-term reporting metric to track efforts to drive down environmental impacts . Through the WWF Basket initiative, WWF has set out the ambitious goal of halving the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets by 2030. This will be measured against a range of criteria in seven key areas: Climate, Deforestation and Conversation, Diets, Agriculture, Marine, Food Waste, and Packaging.
WWF sought support from Eunomia to collect data from retailers to produce an annual progress report showing how far retailers are from meeting the WWF Basket metrics, in a format that is accessible to retailers and consumers alike. One of the biggest challenges for WWF was to create a standardised reporting framework for retailers, suitable for use now but also able to be adapted for the future. This complex challenge also required collection and analysis of disparate business, consumer, and supply chain data.
Having worked with Eunomia in the past on related projects, WWF commissioned Eunomia, and our unique combination of in-depth expertise and practical experience, to take on this challenge. With this expertise, we designed a data collection template for retailers for each of the seven WWF Basket areas.
In the first phase of the work, Eunomia designed retailer facing questions to collect the data needed to measure environmental impact for each basket area in the WWF reporting framework – which we called a ‘data collection template’.
Using this template, we compiled all retailer responses into a searchable summary database, to ease data and results analysis. Data quality checks were implemented, working hand-in-hand with WWF’s subject matter experts, to ensure the highest quality data at all times.
We then used this data to determine average retailer progress towards each of the target outcomes, and helped WWF to present this progress – which in some cases was limited – in a clear and accessible way for their audiences.
The knowledge emerging from Eunomia's work is a key part of WWF's mission to provide visibility into the environmental impacts of the food system and enhance food sustainability.
Outputs from the data analysis led to WWF publishing its first WWF Basket report: What’s In Store For Our Planet: The Impact of UK Shopping Baskets on Climate & Nature – 2022. This annual report, aims to show a trend in action and impact.
The high quality of work and value provided for WWF in the first one-year project, was the foundation for Eunomia being selected to carry out the work long term.
WWF and retailers have a better understanding of how the retail industry on average are performing against the WWF Basket metrics, based on the data Eunomia have collated. This in turn, enables them to identify opportunities for improvement.
This WWF Basket framework has also underpinned the creation of WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature, which now has six signatories Co-op, Lidl, M&S, Tesco, Sainsbury’s & Waitrose), all of whom have committed to work with WWF towards their ambition to halve the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets by 2030.