Why sustainable sourcing is important for us
We view sustainable sourcing as both foundational to our business resilience and an integral element in delivering our Plan for Better.
As a business, we need to have a safe, reliable, and affordable supply of key raw materials and ingredients. We recognise that environmental and human rights risks are posing greater threats to our supply chains. Identifying where these risks exist and taking effective mitigation measures is critical to safeguarding the security of our supply.
Sustainable sourcing is crucial to delivering our Plan for Better, and its three interlocking pillars: Better for you, Better for the planet, and Better for everyone. Here are some examples of how sustainable sourcing features within our Plan for Better:
- We have committed to reducing our whole value chain carbon footprint - also known as our absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions - by 30% by 2030. As part of this work, we are working with our suppliers to help them set their own Net Zero commitments
- We have adopted a nature-positive approach within our business and supply chains, and we are setting targets to sustainably source key raw materials. For example, we have committed to ensuring that our own-brand product supply chains will be deforestation and conversion free by 2025, ensuring that no change in land use has occurred in our direct and indirect production areas since January 2020
- We are committed to sourcing animal-derived ingredients from suppliers that demonstrate both continuous improvement in animal health and welfare and practice responsible antibiotic stewardship. We are transparent about our progress through the publication of our Animal Health and Welfare and Antibiotic Stewardship reports, which can be found here
- We are committed to championing human rights and ensuring that people are treated fairly throughout our business and supply chains. To better understand our human rights impacts, we have conducted a human rights saliency assessment and published the results in our Human Rights Saliency Report
- We want to increase the transparency of our supply chains. As part of this effort, we publish a list of our tier 1 supplier sites for Clothing and Food product categories.
What sustainable sourcing means for us
We are committed to sourcing with integrity. For us, ‘sustainable sourcing’ means ensuring the origins of the materials in our supply chains are sufficiently known, our standards and policies are upheld, and our suppliers are continuously addressing the environmental and human rights impacts of our products.[1]
Our key criteria for sustainable sourcing, which have been informed by the core principles of the Accountability Framework, are:
Putting sustainable sourcing into practice
Our sustainable sourcing practices are guided by general principles and requirements that we apply throughout our supply chains. In sourcing our products, we focus on:
Understanding our impacts and dependencies using independent data, credible experts, accessible grievance mechanisms, and systematic due diligence processes.
- Prioritising both the most salient and material issues, and where we can drive change through targeted action
- Developing supply chain specific approaches and remediation mechanisms, informed by a holistic understanding of local contexts, opportunities, and challenges
- Establishing long-term, open, and fair relationships with suppliers and partnering with them to continuously improve their sustainability performance
- Collaborating with industry and supply chain stakeholders to drive supply chain transformation
- Engaging in broader supply chain initiatives, from landscape initiatives to smallholder programmes and advocacy, to support systemic change and a just transition
- Monitoring and communicating our progress to ensure transparency and accountability.
Our salient environmental and human rights issues
We source hundreds of key raw materials and ingredients from over 70 countries. Each of these materials presents unique challenges and requires specific commitments and targeted action. As part of our sustainable sourcing work, we conducted assessments of our supply chains and sourcing practices to identify our salient environmental and human rights risks. These risks represent the most severe potential negative impacts on people and the planet that could arise as a result of our business’ operations and supply chains. By prioritising our salient environmental and human rights risks, we can better understand, manage, and respond to these risks and build on our long-standing commitments to address them. [2]
Our commitments and progress
To drive improved sourcing practices, we are committed to disclosing our sustainable sourcing commitments and reporting on progress against our targets. We continuously review our commitments to align with relevant science-based goals, international standards and guidelines, and industry best practice.
Our key sustainable sourcing commitments include:
- Ensure all our key raw materials and ingredients have a sustainable sourcing roadmap in place by 2025 [3]
- Reduce Scope 3 GHG emissions by 30% by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions in Scope 3 by 2050
- Ensure our own-brand products are deforestation and conversion free by 2025, with a cut-off date of 2020
- Source 50% of UK fresh food from areas where water is managed sustainably and improve water quality and availability in Sainsbury’s 20 sourcing areas by 2030 [4]
- Reduce the aggregate water footprint of new textile products sold by 30% by 2030 [5]
- Support multi-year investments to transform production landscapes to restore areas of high nature value
- Achieve living wages or income for workers and farmers (equivalent to the volumes that we source) in priority supply chains by 2030.
- Ensure all our tier 1 suppliers have an approach to tackle all forms of discrimination by 2030
- Address and remove all forced labour from our supply chains by scaling detection, supporting access to remedy, and providing support to our suppliers
- Identify and prevent evolving health and safety risks, including those associated with climate change in our priority supply chains by 2030
- Ensure workers in all our tier 1 suppliers’ operations have access to effective and trusted grievance mechanisms
For more information on our commitments and recent achievements, see our reports and policies page.
How we integrate sustainable sourcing within our business
We have been proactively embedding sustainable sourcing into our business and supply chains within our ways of working, standards and policies, strategic planning, and stakeholder engagement. Below, we highlight the areas of the business that are responsible for integrating sustainable sourcing within the business.
Our plc Board, through the Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (CR&S) Committee, oversees our sustainability governance and reviews our sustainability strategy to ensure the purpose, culture, vision, and values are aligned with the overall business strategy. As part of this oversight, the CR&S Committee guides the integration of sustainable sourcing within our business operations and monitors our progress towards all of our sustainability targets. The CR&S Committee also engages our stakeholders on sustainability and corporate responsibility topics.
At an operating board level, the Plan for Better Steering Committee leads the execution of Sainsbury’s sustainability strategy and ensures that we deliver on our commitments. Colleagues from across our business engage in the Steering Committee to consider, and sign off, our Plan for Better work and support the implementation of our sustainability plan, as well as our sustainable sourcing commitments.
Our teams work collaboratively to put our sustainability plan into place and deliver sustainable sourcing. Below, we have listed some examples of what this looks like in practice.
- Our central CR&S team leads on the strategic development of our social sustainability requirements, including our requirements for ethical trade. The central CR&S team also supports technical managers to oversee compliance with our human rights policy
- The authenticity, safety, and integrity of our products is a core element of sustainable sourcing. Our Central Technical Operations teams monitor risks of fraud as well as food safety and quality, and together with our Product Technical teams, set the parameters for our supply chains on product authenticity, safety, and integrity
- Specialist teams like our Packaging Technical team, Central Technical Operations teams, and central CR&S team set out the environmental sustainability requirements for our supply chains. These include requirements on carbon, food waste, and packaging and our raw material sourcing approaches. These requirements are then translated into policies and set out in our Integrity Manual for suppliers
- Veterinary experts in our Agriculture, Horticulture and Aquaculture team lead on the development of our animal welfare requirements, as well as animal testing requirements. These are then translated into policy requirements
- Our Agriculture, Horticulture and Aquaculture team sets out our requirements on crop protection and sustainable agriculture. These requirements are embedded into our supply chains through engagement with farmers and growers, for example through our Crop Action Groups and Farmer Development Groups.
Our commitment to collaboration
Due to the nature of our business, our sourcing practices are linked to a wide range of supply chain stakeholders, from farmers and producers to traders and manufacturers. For a lot of these stakeholders, due to where they sit in our supply chains, we hold indirect relationships with them. Our sustainable sourcing ambitions extend across the entirety of our supply chains, encompassing both direct and indirect relationships. We believe that collaboration will be an essential lever in delivering our sustainable sourcing commitments. We are committed to working with our suppliers, collaborating with supply chain stakeholders, and engaging with broader supply chain initiatives to achieve our sustainable sourcing goals and drive lasting, positive change.
We currently engage with various cross-sector groups, spanning a range of issues and geographies. Here are some examples of our current partnerships:
[1] We define ‘origins of materials’ as including the natural ecosystems within which the materials are produced, the people who are involved in the production of the materials, and the local communities who are impacted by the production of the materials.
[2] We recognise the need to take action on all our salient environmental risks. We are initially focusing our work on five risks, as our immediate priorities, as we continue to improve our sourcing practices.
[3] Our key raw materials include cotton, timber, cocoa, palm oil, soy, coffee, leather, and manmade cellulosic fibres.
[4] This commitment is part of our collective action with WRAP and other Water Roadmap signatories.
[5] This commitment is part of our collective action with WRAP and other Textiles 2030 signatories.