London Climate Action Week 2025: Retail Action on Net Zero Breakfast – Summary & Takeaways

As part of London Climate Action Week 2025, BRC, Carbon Trust and Forum for the Future hosted a breakfast event on retail action on net zero.

Purpose: The panel and discussion addressed how to mobilise and accelerate action internally, covering key challenges to and opportunities for bringing your leadership on board, distributing responsibility effectively, and getting started.

Format: The breakfast started with a panel discussion facilitated by Forum for the Future and featuring BRC, Carbon Trust,  Superdry, Wickes and Specsavers, followed by table group discussions with all attendees.

Participants: Sustainability leaders from BRC retail members keen to advance their action on net zero.

---

Gaining buy-in from senior leadership

Challenges:

• Senior leaders may not recognise their responsibilities for acting to accelerate net zero in your business, or even understand the business case for action.
• Current financial challenges may mean engaging the C-suite on sustainability is even more challenging, with sustainability seen as ‘secondary’ to commercial priorities.

Opportunities:

• Have a clear and strategic ask tailored to the point of the view of the business stakeholder, avoiding ‘ESG jargon’, and frame ask in terms of: business case opportunities and risks, considering commercial, shareholder and consumer priorities, cost-saving and return on investment opportunities, and non-compliance implications.
• Incentivise action by assigning ESG accountability with functional leads and their teams (e.g. Buying Directors / procurement) and sharing responsibilities across teams (e.g. Finance); as well as tying KPIs to sustainability-linked achievements.
• Engage the right teams. This could involve identifying and using ‘sustainability champions’ from other teams across the business to strengthen the message of the core sustainability team and further influence those with decision-making capacity, or exploring how carbon data responsibilities intersect with roles in other departments.
• Showcase ‘wins’ from sustainability-related projects and initiatives to secure buy-in. ‘Quick wins’ could involve programmes to reduce water consumption and waste – which also save money.

Measuring emissions and setting science-based targets

Challenges:

• Businesses may not understand where to begin with decarbonisation, leading to a lack of commitment, prioritisation, and action.

Opportunities:

• Conduct a carbon footprint to understand the emissions hotspots in your business. Don’t worry about perfect data – use what you’ve got to target where to start and re-baseline as you progress, demonstrating continuous improvement.
• Set science-based targets with SBTi to prescribe from the top down an ambitious decarbonisation target that is permanently and publicly on the business agenda, and that provides a common framework for the business to strategically discuss net zero.
• Set clear on-boarding expectations for suppliers to set science-based targets and provide emissions data upfront.

Cross-industry collaboration

Challenges:

• The absence of a standardised methodology for supplier data collection remains a key barrier for the industry in gaining comprehensive emissions data from the supply chain. This is particularly acute for branded data.

Opportunities:

• Utilise existing industry data platforms, such as the BRC Mondra coalition for product-level foot-printing and OpenSupplyHub to map shared suppliers.
• Mobilise collective power as an industry to develop a standardised ask to influence key stakeholder groups, such as landlords or suppliers.
• Take learnings from industry peers to guide your own actions – the BRC provides numerous opportunities to engage with peers in a pre-competitive and collaborative space. Peer precedent (and competition) can also demonstrate to CEOs the need to act.
• Incoming regulation (e.g. EPR, DPP) is set to drive action by levelling the playing field for data collection.

Complying with incoming regulations

Challenges:

• Many businesses are struggling under the ‘regulatory burden’, with rollbacks in other markets increasing uncertainty.

Opportunities:

• Regulation drives action by levelling the playing field and getting sustainability on the strategic agenda.
• Leverage the 80/20 rule to bring focus – 80% of reductions will come from 20% of top suppliers.