Supermarkets battle to show who is greenest

It’s not just about price as new front opens in grocery war

SUPERMARKETS are burnishing their green credentials as they battle to attract customers concerned about the environment.

Amid worldwide calls for action against climate change, the UK’s grocers are making a growing number of pledges to tackle plastics pollution, food waste and harmful carbon emissions.

Sainsbury’s is raising its game by promising to become ‘carbon neutral’ in 20 years.

The move means it will dramatically reduce its net greenhouse emissions, either by switching to renewable sources of energy or by offsetting its contribution through tree planting and other measures.

Its 2040 deadline is a decade earlier than government targets.

The promise was announced just a week after rival Tesco said it was ending the use of plastic wraps for tinned food multi-packs.

Tesco said the move would eliminate 67m pieces of plastic weighing 350 tonnes a year.

Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore Capital, said it was the latest example of the green trend sweeping through the groceries market.

In the past year he said there had been a noticeable uptick in supermarkets cutting the number of products wrapped in plastic and stocking up on so- called ‘plant based’ or vegan foods that are seen as more eco-friendly, because of the large carbon emissions generated by farming meat.

This demand for ‘both sustainability and wellbeing’ – products that are better for us and for the planet – is currently ‘the most powerful force for change in the food industry’, Black said. He added: ‘The trend is real and it is here to stay.’

The push towards greener groceries comes after years of calls by campaigners for the industry to take action. They have long highlighted areas such as store lighting and refrigeration, polluting vehicles used to transport goods, wasteful singleuse plastics and suppliers whose products fuel mass deforestation.

The Daily Mail has also mounted a series of landmark environmental campaigns, including Turn the Tide on Plastic, Be a Tree Angel, and Curb the Cups.

And this newspaper successfully pressed for the plastic bag levy that has slashed the number going to landfill and generated millions for charity.

Sainsbury’s radical £1bn carbon neutral plan involves halving its use of plastic packaging and food waste, alongside other commitments such as its bottle deposit scheme.

But something that could prove more significant – and controversial – is the company’s commitment to encourage ‘healthy, more sustainable diets’ for its customers.

This is expected to involve offering more alternatives to meat and dairy, because of the greenhouse gases created through livestock farming.

A reduction in consumption of meat was the key recommendation of a major United Nations report last year and campaigners say it is where most action is needed. However, even stocking more vegan foods could prove to be perilous for retailers.

Many of these products have environmental problems of their own, critics argue, which are not just limited to the long distances they are transported.

For example, the same vast soy plantations that are used to produce animal feed – which have been blamed for encouraging mass deforestation and soil erosion in South America – are also used to produce tofu and other soya-based foods.

Shore Capital’s Black said this means in some cases replacing meat products with vegan ones does not necessarily mean a smaller carbon footprint.