The retail sector’s decarbonisation focus has shifted upstream. While cutting direct emissions (Scope 1 and 2) remains vital, the real challenge lies in Scope 3, the indirect emissions embedded in supply chains.
As The Grocer recently highlighted, supermarkets and retailers are under growing pressure to help suppliers reduce their emissions. But progress won’t come from pressure alone. A culture of incentives, collaboration, and capability-building is essential.
Why incentives matter
For food and grocery retailers, most emissions sit outside their direct control, in agriculture, manufacturing, packaging, logistics and waste. Yet, suppliers vary hugely in size, resources and readiness to act.
Pushing them with strict mandates risks disengagement. Instead, retailers who support and incentivise their suppliers are finding more success. Incentives can take many forms, commercial advantages, recognition, access to funding or tools, but the principle is simple: shared goals deliver shared progress.
How Achieve Goal 12 can help
Our work with retailers and manufacturers focuses on helping them move from ambition to action by:
- Measuring Scope 3 emissions across the supply chain to identify high-impact categories and suppliers.
- Designing practical incentive frameworks that balance commercial realities with climate ambition.
- Building supplier capability, providing data tools, training and reporting systems that make measurement and reduction achievable.
- Tracking progress and impact, integrating Scope 3 metrics into governance, procurement and reporting frameworks.
By helping retailers and suppliers align around data, incentives and collaboration, we make decarbonisation both measurable and commercially viable.
Why this matters
- Risk reduction: Avoiding future regulatory and reputational exposure.
- Resilience: Building supply chains that can withstand shocks and cost pressures.
- Reputation and investment: Demonstrating credible Scope 3 action that resonates with customers, investors and partners.
Retailers cannot achieve net zero by passing the burden to suppliers. The path forward lies in shared action, measurable progress, and incentive-led collaboration.
If you’d like to explore how Achieve Goal 12 can help your organisation design and deliver a Scope 3 supplier engagement strategy, get in touch with our team.