Sustainable Retail Summit 2021

At The Consumer Goods Forum, we are driven by a shared purpose to care for each other and the planet. That’s why we are delighted to bring our 2021 Sustainable Retail Summit to you this October for its sixth annual edition. This year’s event will combine the virtual and the physical, allowing you to connect and join your fellow delegates wherever you are, and however you want.

The SRS brings together hundreds of the world’s industry leaders to dream big and inspire even bigger impacts. Our industry has come a long way in dealing with today’s big challenges in sustainability and health and wellbeing, but there is still some way to go. The recent pandemic has further accelerated the shift into a “new era” of sustainability which is already shaping the industry. SRS will offer a unique opportunity to learn how we can adapt our business models and take positive action today to build a positive future for the industry, the planet, and its people.

More and more, sustainability and health are becoming prerequisites to long-term, efficient, innovative and resilient business performance. A real shift in mindset is occurring. Join this session to learn about how business can play its part in better embedding sustainability and health across business practices. In this moderated discussion, panelists will share their insights on key sustainability and health issues, ranging from practical ways that retailers can engage suppliers to reduce food waste, how companies are reducing plastic waste by moving consumers towards a zero waste model, and progress being made with the CGF’s Collaboration for Healthier Lives Coalition.

Spanning nutrition, mental health & leadership, join this session to gain insights into new ways of working post-Covid and what best practices companies are putting in place to support their employees at such crucial times.

Join us as we explore success stories from global companies that have shifted to more sustainable business models.

We’ll share real examples of how you can take effective action at scale, to deliver measurable results and accelerate progress towards climate, social and financial aspirations.

Whether through waste valorisation, identifying new revenue streams, adopting cutting-edge technologies, working with start-ups, using different materials or making acquisitions – we’ll share our expertise, toolkits and open the floor to your questions.

We help companies seize the commercial opportunity of sustainability, to create lasting and profitable change across your value chain. We are experts in end-to-end innovation for sustainability – from insights and strategies to new business models and supply chains, to technology and product development through to commercialisation. Find out more at www.paconsulting.com/sustainability

Food and drink purchase records are not only a tool to evaluate business metrics, but a valuable asset to better understand population and planetary health. They offer novel insights at a scale not seen before and with temporality that means insights remain timely.

When considering traditional methods of dietary reporting that require primary data collection through keeping a diary, interviews or active reporting via an app – a new approach with no burden on the public, and little burden on businesses who generate data reports routinely – transaction data are particularly appealing. That said, given commercial and personal sensitivities associated with sales data, data governance and security processes are critical. Developing trusted relationships with research organisations, such as Universities are an essential part of this process.

In this session we will share with you aspects of a journey building such a relationship between industry and academia in the UK and findings from our research. Beginning with purchase records in a UK national survey, through to purchase records form a supermarket loyalty card we present findings on dietary patterns that promote both health and sustainability. We will share insights into how supermarket transaction records compare with more traditional measures of assessing diet – addressing the question: Do purchase records represent what is actually consumed?

To wrap up there will be a short interview with a supermarket nutritionist and an academic to highlight benefits of the collaboration from both sides, before opening up for live Q&A with conference delegates.

The pre-summit preparations for the UN Food Systems Summit, held on September 23rd 2021, indicate the need for governance to align and integrate a diversity of solutions for collective impact on health and sustainability. Based on learnings from the Summit process, this session will set out three key essentials for what governance needs to do to maximise collective impact on healthier diets from sustainable food systems:

1. Embrace a diversity of solutions – even those you might not agree with.
2. Develop a shared language to talk about the problem – otherwise the solutions will never fit together for real impact.
3. Manage the power imbalances that come with diversity – there needs to be space for all to thrive.

Join Corinna Hawkes, Director of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London, to learn more about how each of these essentials requires an understanding of the interconnections between the different actions, which in turn will require a shift to systems thinking and doing.

As Consumer Goods companies craft their sustainability strategies, they are being spurred by regulatory requirements, consumer demands, and our shared responsibility to preserve our planet. The rapidly escalating climate change crisis has made sustainability a boardroom issue. Now is the time to act! Explore with us seven key sustainability initiatives that are top of mind for our Consumer Goods customers. From brands with purpose to consumer transparency; Scope 1, 2, and 3 carbon emissions measurement to re-commerce; green buildings, remote work, and more. Hear how industry leaders are shaping their sustainability agendas.

The world is facing a profound waste crisis. Landfills are overflowing, methane emissions from organic waste are dangerously accelerating climate change, and each year 11 million tons of plastic enter the world’s oceans—largely from emerging economies, where nearly 2 billion people have no access to waste management. Rethinking Recycling, a flagship initiative of Delterra, is transforming the way communities in Argentina and Indonesia manage their waste and maximize recycling, and thus eliminating waste flowing into the environment and improving thousands of lives in the process. In this Tech Talk, the President and CEO of Delterra, Dr. Shannon Bouton will share what Rethinking Recycling has learned from its work on the ground, how it is scaling its impact to dozens more cities, and how sustainable retail can lead the recycling movement for generations to come.

Two-thirds of consumers think carbon labelling on products is a good idea and over 50% of consumers would choose a product with a carbon footprint label. Consumer purchasing power could be one lever to drive decarbonisation, but to be truly effective, consumers must be able to readily access information on the true climate change impacts of products and services.

With a growth in corporate demand for product carbon footprinting and labelling, this special session will provide an overview of footprinting and the benefits that a company has to gain by quantifying the carbon footprints of their products and services. We will discuss how a product carbon label can allow you to demonstrate to consumers your transparent and proactive approach, and explore how certifying the carbon footprint of products helps brands to communicate their carbon impact with confidence.

Measure your carbon footprint. Reduce your carbon footprint. Show your commitment.

Companies are now facing the burden of proving that their supply chains are free of forced labour, human rights abuses and deforestation due to increasing regulations (mandatory due diligence, customs seizures, etc). Companies need to navigate this complex, evolving regulatory landscape and the best chance of success in ensuring compliance is by being proactive and thorough in the human rights and environmental due diligence of their supply chains. This panel will discuss how the CGF helps support members in addressing due diligence through the Forest Positive Coalition, Human Rights Coalition and Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative. It will also probe into how governments can and should coordinate on information linked to company due diligence and supply chains, and how best to streamline current and emerging legislation.

The Tent Partnership for Refugees mobilizes the business community to economically integrate refugees by including them in their core business operations – including by mobilizing suppliers and vendors to hire refugees, or sourcing from businesses that employ refugees. When refugees arrive in a new host country, it is crucial they find work to earn a living for themselves and their families. In many major refugee-hosting countries, refugees don’t have the legal right to work — this means they often end up working in dangerous, unregulated jobs where they are at greater risk of exploitation. However, even in countries where refugees do have the right to work, they are often pushed into jobs that put them at risk of working in unsafe conditions, earning lower wages than local workers, or being forced to work to pay off debt.

In partnership with leading forced labor non-profit Verité, Tent has published a new report, Combating Forced and Child Labor of Refugees in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Responsible Sourcing, that will launch exclusively at the Sustainable Retail Summit 2021, to explore why and how companies should proactively include refugees in their supply chains to mitigate against the risk of forced and child labor.

Join this panel discussion to learn about the reasons refugees end up in situations of forced labor, why companies should take proactive steps to tackle vulnerability to forced labor in the supply chain including their experience of refugee inclusion, and the practical steps that companies should take on these key issues.

US shoppers expect supermarkets to “up their game” relative to sustainability. Shopper concerns relate mostly to what they see and understand — such as plastic packaging and food waste. They want grocery retailers to play a leading role in protecting the environment, as well as in treating their employees fairly and with dignity. For their part, supermarket chains understand the need to be good stewards of the environment by doing more, but also want to ensure they receive credit for the positive steps they are taking — particularly around donations to food banks.

In this presentation, we will hear from one of the most highly respected supermarket chains in the country on how they think about sustainability within the context of their business, the actions they are taking, and how they intend to “move the needle” further. We’ll examine specific steps they are taking, how they communicate those activities to shoppers and how, internally, they discuss the costs and rationale for all these activities to provide attendees a sense of the real-world challenges and opportunities companies face as they implement sustainability strategies.

The last few decades have seen an increase in data and the amount of tools available to measure climate change and the impact of human activity on the environment. These diagnoses, which initially encouraged our industry to make commitments, now guide the reality of our daily actions throughout our value chain. The pertinent question is no longer “what do we have to do?” but “how should we do it efficiently?”. At Bel, our mission is to offer healthier and responsible food for all, which fully integrates the reduction of our carbon emissions across our value chain: with our farmers, in our factories and with our logistics chain; by fighting against food waste; by working on responsible packaging; or by reviewing our portfolio. This mission involves transforming our business model, and our organization. It means working hand-in-hand with our entire ecosystem — from farmers to retailers, but also with our employees with our carbon decision-making tool, which gives them the ability to have a positive impact in a concrete manner.

P&G’s ambition is to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions across its operations and supply chain by 2040. Through clear, science-based targets achieving net zero by 2040 will require invention, creativity, and partnership. The task ahead is urgent, difficult, and much bigger than any single company or country. Even though one business does not have all the answers, P&G is determined that uncertainty will not hold back these advances. Bringing a net zero future into focus will come through collaboration across the private, nonprofit, and public sectors and involve every aspect of business, from raw material to retailer.

Maersk is the world’s largest container shipping company and a world leading end-to-end logistics provider. Low-carbon solutions are already starting to be available today in container shipping, and are being piloted in all transport modes. Maersk stands committed to become carbon neutral by latest 2050 and support the growing number of customers who look to decarbonize their supply chains – giving a firm signal to fuel producers that sizable market demand for the green fuels of the future is emerging at speed.

In this panel, we will focus on how advances are being made in partnerships across the business, on the road to net zero but also what are the challenges ahead in the decarbonization of the supply chain. Beyond the actions being made by Maersk and P&G, it is up to all, all businesses, retailers and individuals to act now.

One reason why plastic packaging ends up in nature is due to the complexity of the recycling process, which can be complicated by poor packaging design, the inclusion of problematic materials and the presence of excess packaging. Advancing on their top priority, the CGF’s Plastic Waste Coalition members have now finalised the complete series of “Golden Design Rules”, for the design of plastic packaging, created to accelerate progress towards using less and better plastic. Join this panel to learn more about the practical implementation and application of these rules within companies and how plastics packaging is being redesigned in innovative ways to reduce waste and increase recyclability.

The CGF’s Collaboration for Healthier Lives (CHL) Coalition is about making it easier for people around the world to adopt healthier lives for themselves and their families. It’s about making healthier decisions easier and habitual for people in every community around the world, it’s about local initiatives in local communities. With a special focus on Latin America, this session will tackle the challenges and showcase the solutions to combatting health inequalities linked to poverty and malnutrition. Panelists will provide concrete, practical examples of local and regional initiatives that, coupled with collaboration across stakeholders and sectors, are paving the way to overcoming inequality and promoting inclusiveness.