Sainsbury’s

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company provides evidence that the performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies are linked to targets and objectives covering environmental and social issues.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses how it engages with stakeholders, the issues raised during such activities, and the specific outcomes of its stakeholder engagement. Moreover, its stakeholder engagement activities cover nature, nutrition, and social areas.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions. It shows leadership by aligning its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory, demonstrating its commitment to addressing climate change, while progress updates regarding these targets and emission reductions are regularly reported.

Animal welfare
Some of the company’s products are RSPCA Assured certified or Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certified. It also discloses targets that address welfare issues of cows and prawns in its supply chain, and reports progress against them.

Food loss and waste
Between 2021 and 2022, the company experienced a decrease in the amount of food loss and waste (FLW) it generated. To track progress and ensure transparency, the company not only discloses its FLW reduction targets but also reports its progress against these targets. The company’s FLW reduction targets are in line with SDG 12.3, which aims to achieve a 50% reduction in FLW by 2030. Additionally, the company actively collaborates with its value chain partners to prevent the generation of FLW.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company is actively involved in reducing plastic usage and adopting sustainable packaging practices. It shares specific data on its efforts to reduce plastic usage and increase the use of sustainable packaging. Additionally, the company has established targets to minimize overall plastic consumption and waste, as well as enhance the proportion of recycled materials in its plastic packaging. Regular progress reports are provided to track advancements towards these goals.

Protein diversification
The company discloses evidence of an increase in the proportion of plant-based and meat-free proteins within its portfolio.

Water withdrawal
The company actively shows its commitment to reducing water withdrawal by implementing measures within its own operations. There is a specific time-bound target in place, allowing the company to track and report progress on reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. In addition, the company provides information on the amount of water withdrawn for its own operations in areas where water scarcity is a concern. Furthermore, the company takes the initiative to engage with suppliers in order to collaborate and minimize water withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company reports a 20% reduction in the amount of sugar across soft drinks, ice cream, and cereals since 2015. Additionally, it discloses that 97% of its own-brand products meet Public Health England’s salt reduction target. The company also discloses its approach to defining healthy food categories. These criteria aim to reward products that meet the following UK government-endorsed criteria: the number of red multiple traffic lights, Public Health England reformulation criteria for sugar and salt, portion size, regulated levels for certain nutrition claims, and products included on the Eatwell Guide. The company has set a target to increase its Healthy and Better for You sales tonnage (including own brand and branded) as a proportion of total sales. It aims to achieve at least 83.1% by 2025 but is currently sitting at 80%. The company also has a target to increase vegetable sales and reports progress against it.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses it has adopted the UK Traffic Light front-of-pack labelling system.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company recognises the health and safety related risks of vulnerable groups in its value chain. It also recognises that migrant workers, women, and children are exposed to extreme working conditions.

Land rights
The company has a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. It requires its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company discloses its target to achieve living wages or income for workers in its priority supply chains by 2030.

Act ethically
The company has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of its workers. It also divulges its methods for monitoring supplier compliance. Furthermore, it sets an expectation that business relationships should not enforce work exceeding 48 hours per regular work week or 60 hours with overtime.

Moreover, as a signatory of the Women’s Empowerment Principles, the company underscores its commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It reports data regarding the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce in various employee categories, as well as female representation on the board. Additionally. it aims to achieve a 50% female presence at the senior management level by 2024.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to human rights and the ILO fundamental rights at work within its operations and supply chain. It details the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts throughout these areas. Additionally, the company outlines its approach for assessing human rights risks, reveals its salient human rights issues, and presents a case study illustrating its response to a salient human rights issue.

Furthermore, it discloses stakeholder categories, including low-tier suppliers, workers, sub-contractors, retailers, farmers, women, children, migrant workers, certain ethic groups and communities, whose human rights may have been affected by its activities. It actively engages with these stakeholders to address potential impacts. Moreover, it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
While the company states that the board of directors has expertise in sustainability, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including nutrition, climate, water, soil health, social inclusion, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Furthermore, it could provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets and report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has a chance to decrease its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and report its progress towards these targets. It has already disclosed that the science-based targets initiative (SBTi) has approved its science-based targets for scope 3, aligning with a well below 2-degree pathway. Additionally, the company can also consider disclosing scope 3 emissions targets that align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Animal welfare
While the company has a target that addresses the welfare issues of cows and prawns in its supply chain, it has an opportunity to make it applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses some evidence of addressing conversion, including RSPO Segregated, Proterra, and FSC Standards certified commodities. However, these certifications do not cover all commodities, and the evidence does not guarantee DCF-aligned practices. While it has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, it does not cover all sourced products and their supply chains.

Protein diversification
While the company discloses its intentions to partake in protein diversification activities, it has an opportunity to set a sales-based target to increase alternative proteins across its portfolio, as well as report progress against this target.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of products for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that 100% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme/certification programme or other widely recognised (industry-specific) certification. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

Living wage
The company discloses that it pays its retail store employees a living wage in the UK but has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or direct suppliers that are paid a living wage. Also, it could describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources.

Act ethically
While the company prohibits bribery and corruption, it has an opportunity to formalise this commitment in a public policy document. Additionally, integrating related clauses into contracts with business relationships could strengthen this stance. Moreover, it could outline its process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts within its own operations.

Furthermore, although the company states in its Annual Report that it engages with government, devolved administrations, regulators and industry bodies on public policy issues, it could explicitly outline its approach to lobbying and political engagement and formalise this approach in a public policy document.

Moreover, despite disclosing that it has not made political donations during FY2021/22, the company could develop a public policy statement that explicitly confirms its non-participation in political contributions. In addition, it could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company states that it respects the health and safety of workers, it could formalise this commitment in a public policy document.

Additionally, despite already paying a living wage to retail store employees in the UK, the company can extend this commitment to cover all workers. It also has the potential to provide more insight into the method used for determining living wage standards in its operational regions. Relatedly, although the company has established wage expectations for suppliers and aims to achieve living wages in priority supply chains by 2030, there is an opportunity to detail its strategy for supporting this wage standard.

Moreover, the company can enhance transparency by reporting data, such as the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
While the company discloses that it prevents, mitigates or remediates specific human rights, it could disclose a global system to act on all its salient human rights issues, and reveal how the system applies to its supply chain.