{"id":55212,"date":"2022-03-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/?p=55212"},"modified":"2022-04-04T10:09:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T09:09:11","slug":"joining-the-dots-what-does-sustainability-mean-for-retailers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/retail\/2022\/03\/02\/joining-the-dots-what-does-sustainability-mean-for-retailers\/","title":{"rendered":"Joining the dots: What does sustainability mean for retailers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
What is sustainability? As a Global Sustainability Specialist for Microsoft with a passion for all things sustainable, it\u2019s a question I get asked a lot. It\u2019s also a question I like to ask others, and I\u2019m always curious to hear the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Because that\u2019s the thing about sustainability: it means different things to different people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, sustainability is about looking at the world from the outside in. That means looking at all of our impacts and trying to reconcile them as individuals. Whether that\u2019s how much plastic, or water, or something else we’re wasting, what\u2019s important is that we know we could do something better with it. Then it\u2019s about looking at the impacts of our actions on others. Where do the products we buy come from? Where is our waste going? We need to understand the social implications of the actions we take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Has the world woken up to sustainability? I\u2019m not so sure. There’s still a lot of greenwashing from businesses across all industries, retail included, and people are getting wise to that. When I was at COP26 recently, many people were asking businesses like Microsoft: \u201cWell, what do you actually do?\u201d That type of finger pointing is good, because it can spark more rigor. Every retail business now needs to be able to say: \u201cThis is what we do\u201d and to say it with confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here I want to unpack some of the big sustainability pieces I see for retailers now and going forward. I hope it will help UK retailers to take steps towards delivery of tangible, lasting impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The importance of visibility, transparency and honesty in sustainability<\/h2>\n\n\n
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The most important steps to sustainability are transparency and visibility. Retailers have to be able to put their hands on their hearts and say that they know where the products they stock have come from. And not just on a surface level; they need to know right down to the raw materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data visibility is becoming more and more achievable. Take cotton, for example. People are now doing DNA tracking for cotton to learn whether it’s been ethically sourced or recycled. But there\u2019s still a way to go, and the grey areas get greyer the further you go down the supply chain. Retailers need to be transparent about that. If you\u2019ve got some grey areas, just acknowledge them. It\u2019s much better to be honest and say you don\u2019t know rather than pretending that you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The flip side is making sure that information is given correctly to consumers. As a result, people will understand what they’re buying and the impact of that product. This translates to consumer behaviour too. One thing our friends at a global consumer packaged goods organisation are doing is looking at how they can change people’s behaviours about showering. Why? Because one of the biggest problems for water waste is not the amount of water that they use to make a bottle of shampoo. It\u2019s the amount of time that all of us spend standing in a shower wasting water to wash our hair. It\u2019s a great example of a company that\u2019s gently nudging consumers to use its products in a more sustainable way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Measuring sustainability across the supply chain<\/h2>\n\n\n
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In order to have a meaningful conversation about sustainability, you need to be able to measure your impact. So one of the first things retailers need to do is establish their base levels. Where are you today? You can start very simply by looking at the totals of all your invoices from your utility bills. That gives you a starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The supply chain is also a good tool to measure against. Move from one end of the chain to the other and analyse the impact of each stage. From there you can start to identify areas that you can improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, supply chains are complex, and having full visibility end-to-end is challenging, especially for bigger retailers where the supply chain is huge. How do you get the assurance that the bottle of shampoo you stock is actually being sourced correctly, right the way down to the people in a palm oil field in Indonesia?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a concern we’ve got ourselves at Microsoft. We\u2019ve got our responsible sourcing team. But how do we actually know that Microsoft products like Surface have been responsibly sourced, right the way back down to a guy digging away at a mine to get some cobalt to go into the battery on one of our devices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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