Sustainability is deeply ingrained in Musgrave’s values, and as a sixth generation family business, we believe it is our duty to step up and protect the planet for future generations. In 2022, Musgrave announced a €25 million investment in SuperValu and Centra stores across the island of Ireland as part of a new sustainability fund aimed at empowering independent retailers to achieve net zero carbon by 2040. The fund, which is part of Musgrave’s all-island sustainability strategy, will result in an estimated 12% carbon reduction by the company over a two-year period. Musgrave’s new sustainability strategy aims to reduce its carbon emissions as it reaches net zero carbon by 2040, provide consumers with more sustainable shopping choices in-store and work with retailers to make every community in Ireland a sustainable one.

In the Republic of Ireland, Musgrave committed €50,000 per SuperValu store and €28,000 per Centra store as part of the Sustainability Fund. Retailers selected suitable initiatives based on each store’s needs and set-up, including upgrading freezers and refrigeration units, LED lighting retrofit, solar panels, and electronic shelf edge labels (eSEL). Since the Sustainability Fund was launched in June 2022, it has achieved a 9% reduction carbon across the SuperValu and centra estates in the first year.

New Look understands now more than ever the environmental impacts across our business, our value chain, and our products. The textiles footprint, particularly during the early stages of a garment’s lifecycle, is the primary source of carbon emissions within fashion supply chains globally.

We understand that to tackle carbon emissions, it is important to engage teams across our business and utilise external support where necessary. This year, New Look has worked with Anthesis to create a decarbonisation roadmap, working with teams across the business to implement short, medium, and long-term targets to tackle carbon emissions and achieve Net Zero by 2040.  We have further engaged with internal teams, including our Senior Finance Team, through a decarbonisation engagement day with Accenture. From this meeting, a project has been initiated to implement a carbon pricing mechanism for our Buying and Merchandising Team.

It is also essential that we can measure the energy use and energy sources used by our facilities, and we are collecting this data via the Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM). Using this data, we were able to identify our key greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting countries across the supply chain, understanding country specific conditions and site-specific emission sources. We will also be able to use this data to inform future our strategic decisions on where to concentrate production.

At Pets at Home our purpose is to create a better world for pets and the people who love them. It drives us to deliver pet-care in a long term socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, and financially successful way. It starts with our passion for pets, that’s what unites us with our colleagues, customers, and communities. Our purpose is why we exist and to deliver this, challenges us to look after the interests of all stakeholders who we interact with and depend on by continually improving our performance and creating sustainable value.

Our submission focuses on how we engaged our colleagues in our sustainability strategy refresh.  Colleagues are critical stakeholders in our strategy: they action and champion it but their views can often be representative of the general public so getting insights from them helps shape our consumer strategy.  Colleagues are the critical enabler for us to reduce supply chain emissions and to identify potential areas of opportunity we may have overlooked.  They’re also often at the coalface in our retail and vet sites so if they understand, know about and feel part of our sustainability strategy will champion it to consumers, their friends, family and wider networks.  The benefits go beyond our supply chain emissions and extend into our consumer brand, employer brand and ultimately how we create a better world for pets and the people who love them.  Colleagues would be the key to unlocking commercial and reputational long-term value from our supply chain strategy.  Tapping into colleagues in a business as complex as ours with multiple stakeholders across multiple sites in areas we knew would be challenging.  We would have to be innovative and creative to ensure we stood out from other engagement campaigns.  Building trust with colleagues that if we sought their views that action would be taken would also be one of our challenges.  This is how our ‘Big Listen’, our submission came about.

Working together with our entire supply chain, we make the most beautiful handbags and accessories in the most responsible way we can. With our ESG strategy in place, we constantly monitor how we can make positive changes in our business and encourage change elsewhere. Ethically, environmentally and socially. This affects how we design, source, manufacture and sell our products.

We know that reducing waste is one of the most important areas in protecting our planet’s future. Which is why all the leather we use is a by-product of the food industry. We only work with tanneries that are Leather Working Group-accredited to a minimum of Bronze (95% of ours are Gold). The ‘Best in Class’ standard set for our tanneries assures us that water treatment and chemical usage doesn’t cause damage to the environment, either directly or indirectly.

We audit our entire supply chain to ensure they are compliant with our exacting standards. 100% are signed up to Carbon Zero and Brand ESG strategies. Over the past 12 months with our support, two of our major Partners in Kolkata, India have installed solar panels, one covering 85,000 sq/ft of roof space.

Alongside this, we manage our manufacturing efficiencies to support our production Partners in keeping to our ESG strategies. As well as better management of resources and energy usage, this helps us to plan further ahead and freight by sea rather than air.

We have restructured our supply chain to work with just one key Partner to produce trims and hardware, giving us increased control over freight into our Indian manufacturers. Our cargo freight has also undergone even closer scrutiny and we’ve recently moved to using a more local port, reducing road transport by 60% in India. While also ensuring all containers are on average at 92% capacity.