Retail & CPG
Sustainability in Retailing
Sustainability Trends in Modern Retailing
Customers are increasingly voting with their wallets, choosing to shop with retailers that align with their own personal social and environmental values. This pressure is making waves across the industry driving everything from the diversification of board rooms and living wage policies, to carbon emission reduction targets and sustainable packaging of products. Retailers need to adapt to new expectations from customers, new ways of working across the business, and new environmental and social climates around the world.
As we adapt to the covid-driven e-commerce boom, topics involving product provenance and optimising nodes in the supply chain have become focal points for building back better. Retailers that succeed in today’s world are those who develop new supply chain designs with agility and resilience to future-proof operations.
Consumers are increasingly choosing where they shop based on sustainability credentials
Source: Global Web Index
Sustainable Retailing
From grocery and CPG stores to fashion and textiles outlets, retailers must focus on sustainable practices across their businesses to maintain competitiveness and increase brand loyalty. This involves reviewing existing supply chain operations, as well as looking closer at their products and how these can be better designed to move away from take-make-waste and towards more sustainable models.
Retailers are in a powerful position to make impactful changes that drive sustainability while enabling a profitable future. Leaders across all sectors of retail are thinking about how sustainability principles and practices, such as ESG, are not a problem to solve, but the solution to cleaner, more efficient, less wasteful practices.
Circular Systems in Sustainable Retail
Interest in circular business models has grown, as they are now a differentiator for building customer loyalty, creating resilience to withstand supply chain turbulence and addressing extended producer responsibility (EPR) requirements across global regions. Circularity also serves to reduce waste and recover materials which can reduce associated costs.
Supplier engagement is another differentiator for those looking to embed sustainability throughout their organisation. As a sector with complicated supply chains, COVID-19 has illustrated the business case for circularity as a tactic to close material loops and build relationships across the value chain to strengthen security of supply. Supplier engagement is paramount to successfully reduce negative impacts in the upstream supply chain through carbon emissions reductions, ensuring ethical working conditions, responsible sourcing and environmentally friendly product labeling.
Our Expertise Supporting Retailers
Anthesis has extensive experience delivering sustainability in the retail industry, where we come together with the recognition that to solve the complex challenges that retailers face today, we need diverse expertise and combined skillsets. We seek to share our expertise and experience to help retailers identify opportunities to improve sustainability practices.
We have helped some of the world’s largest grocery, home improvement, outdoor outfitters, department stores and online retailers to create sustainability strategies that strengthens their business model and resonate with their consumer base.
Contact us
We’d love to hear from you
Our Latest Thinking
Sustainability Services for Retailers
Our Services and approach
Anthesis provides agile analytics and research capabilities that deliver actionable, commercial foresight and insight for the retail sector. Our Retail Analytics service offering covers a wide array of service lines:
Strategy + Governance Services
Supply Chain + Operations Services
- Materials Selection Analysis
- Carbon + Water Footprinting
- Waste Audits + Analytics
- Renewable Energy Roadmapping
- Science-Based Target Evaluation
- Market Insights and Benchmarking
Sustainable Products + Services
- SCIP
- Responsible Sourcing
- Resource Efficiency + Waste
- Sustainability Impact Assessments
- Product Compliance Audits
- Lifecycle Assessment
Brand + Communications Services
Anthesis provides evidence-based strategies, innovating, and tools to address challenges and unlock opportunities. Our Retail Solutions service offering covers a wide array of service lines:
Strategy + Governance Services
Supply Chain + Operations Services
- Company Mobility Plans
- Energy Compliance
- Responsible Sourcing
- Circularity Strategy + Innovation
- Carbon Reduction Strategies
- Green Building Strategy + Design
Sustainable Products + Services
Brand + Communications Services
Anthesis provides pragmatic support and services to deliver on-the-ground impact, efficiently and effectively. Our Retail Implementation service offering covers a wide array of service lines:
Strategy + Governance Services
Supply Chain + Operations Services
- Supply Chain Engagement
- Carbon Offsetting for Business
- Management Systems
- Environmental Certifications
- Outsourced Energy Management
Sustainable Products + Services
- Chemical Consortium Management
- Strategy Implementation
- Ratings + Certifications
- Project Management
- Extended Producer Responsibility
Brand + Communications Services
Contact us
Find out how we can support you
