Retail brands
commit
to decarbonize
their supply chains

The L.E.S.S. program aims to organize cooperation with suppliers of major retailers, with the dual goal of:

• quantifying the carbon emissions generated by the products made by industrial manufacturers (including manufacturers of own-brand products);

• encouraging suppliers to make their own commitments to reduce their carbon footprint or to publicize commitments they have already made.

 

L.E.S.S. as an approach is both:

• Sector-based: initiated by 11 brands in the large-scale retail sector, including supermarket brands and specialized goods retailers, through their trade federations FCD and Perifem. Any retailers who are interested, whether joined one of the 2 organizations or not, are encouraged to join this program that offers a fresh opportunity to establish business models that are more resilient and sustainable.

• Collaborative: discussions are being held jointly with manufacturers and their representative organizations to identify what is needed and ways of working together, always in strict compliance with competition law.

 

As part of those efforts, there is a plan to set up a shared platform for the collection of data on suppliers' carbon emissions for the purpose of:

• Simplifying the process of depositing data for suppliers by creating a single interface shared by all the brands involved in the effort;

• Make it easier for the retail brands to collect, process, and keep track of the data;

• Obtain data that are reliable, comparable, and pooled among all the brands involved;

• mote the establishment of a platform at the European level.

 

The data collected on that platform will enable the retail brands to quantify their emissions and set out their decarbonization strategies, in line with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

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The Paris Climate Agreement commits the signatory States to maintaining global warming to well below 2°C by 2100, while continuing to pursue their efforts to keep that rise in global warming below 1.5°C. Those trajectories require an annual reduction in carbon emissions of at least 2.5% for the first objective and at least 4.2% for the second.

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In order to outline the form of the envisaged platform, studies have been undertaken to specify the needs of both the manufacturers and the retail brands. On that basis, work groups have been meeting to hammer out the technical specifications of the future platform. Next, an invitation to tender will be issued in order to receive proposals from potential service providers.