Reports • Supermarkets, health and sustainability
Greening Supermarkets: Do supermarkets help consumers buy sustainable food?
In-depth research into the policies and practices of UK supermarkets on sustainability. This report was commissioned as a scoping study for the National Consumer Council, to help them develop a series of influential in-store surveys examining how well leading UK supermarkets help their customers to understand and buy sustainable food and other products.
Undertaken by staff from The Food Commission and Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming, this study examined appropriate means for measuring and rating supermarkets for their behaviour and progress on key themes of importance to sustainability. A range of measures were considered appropriate for a shopping survey. The report also contains a review of supermarket sustainability policies and a survey of other information or data available in the public domain. The broad themes covered are as follows:
- Transport and fuel use
- Energy policy and use (and commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions)
- Chemicals policy and use (pesticides and household products)
- Nutrition (mainly dealt with in the NCC’s Rating Retailers for health reports, but we include a brief commentary here to highlight additional relevance to sustainability)
- Packaging and waste
- Fair trade and labour standards
- Sustainable forests
- Sustainable fisheries policy
- Animal welfare
- Investment
The report contains many illustrations, data tables and photographs of contemporary products, labelling and marketing activites. The 219-page report also serves as a useful snapshot of supermarket progress on sustainability in 2005, which Sustain has made available for researchers wishing to track progress over time. The 2005 report led to the following surveys and reports from National Consumer Council (an organisation that has since disbanded):
- 2009: Behind the scenes at retailers: Recommendations for corporate targets on green issues [more information]
- 2009: Green to the Core? [more information]
- 2007: Green grocers? [more information]
- 2006: Greening supermarkets [more information]
- The 2007 NCC report Season's Promise, challenging the supermarket sector to buy and promote more seasonal food [more information]
Report contents
- Overview
- Interviews with key stakeholders
- Other supermarket rating systems
- What consumers say and do
- The market for ‘ethical’ products
- What the supermarkets say and do: corporate reports
- What the supermarkets say and do: pilot surveys
- Suggested indicators, for discussion
- Suggested set of indicative products
- Time estimate for product analysis
- Scoring
- Challenges and additional points for discussion
Greening Supermarkets: Do supermarkets help consumers buy sustainable food?
219pp - 2005 | 4800Kb
Published Sunday 5 June 2005
Supermarkets, health and sustainability: Sustain has worked in particular with the Greening Supermarkets, Healthier Supermarkets and Race to the Top initiatives to stimulate changes in supermarket policies and practices.
