Sainsbury’s

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.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
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. Also, 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. Furthermore, the company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives that cover nature, including biodiversity and social issues.

GHG emissions
The company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, it reports progress against its scope 1 and 2 emissions and its scope 1 and 2 emissions target is aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Solid and air pollution
The company partakes in activities and discloses quantitative data related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging. It has also set targets regarding the reduction of overall plastic use and waste and an increase in the proportion of recycled content in its plastic packaging, and reports progress against them.

Water
The company has a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal in its own operations and reports progress against the target. It demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations and water withdrawal in water-stressed areas. The company also engages with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal. It discloses its processes for managing and monitoring discharge water quality.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company discloses its processes to identify and recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights, and describes how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

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, the company 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 and 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 pledges to uphold 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 to 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, the company discloses stakeholder categories, including low-tier suppliers, workers, sub-contractors, retailers, farmers, women, children, migrant workers, certain ethnic 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.

Lobbying
The company does not report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on nature-related issues, nor whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
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 concerning the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
No evidence was found regarding the company’s efforts to avoid ecosystem conversion, including deforestation, or promote restoration. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

GHG emissions
The company should report progress against its scope 3 targets and align its scope 3 targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company has indicated intentions to engage with international frameworks like the TNFD for disclosing its impacts on nature, it currently lacks concrete assessments of these impacts within its own operations. Although it expects its suppliers to conduct impact assessments in biodiversity areas, the company itself does not provide evidence of assessing the impacts on nature, including biodiversity, in its upstream activities. There is also an absence of disclosure regarding its dependencies on nature within its operations and upstream relationships.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
The company can disclose locations within or adjacent to areas important for biodiversity, both in its operations and supplier locations. It could also disclose species populations existing in or adjacent to its own and its suppliers’ locations, as well as the conservation status of species identified at its own sites according to national and international lists.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
No evidence was found regarding the company’s efforts to work towards a circular economy or which organisms it exploits. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

Solid and air pollution
The company should commit to avoid developing or marketing new chemicals or products with SVHC (substance of very high concern) properties and work on reducing the production of hazardous substances and waste. It has an opportunity to report on air quality parameters of emissions of harmful air pollutants and disclose time-bound targets to reduce air pollutants across the most material parts of its value chain. The company could also report on the amount of plastic waste generated and the proportions directed from or to disposal.

Water
There is no evidence that the company discloses water pollutant metrics or targets against it. It does not disclose a commitment to respect the right to water. The company also does not disclose its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its own operations.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not disclose a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Also, the company does not disclose its processes to identify and recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights and describes how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment and to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation, or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

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