TheRetailer_Summer_19

NEWS FROM THE BRC

A Smarter Future for Retail Elle McCall Creative Partner Hubbub

Leah Riley Brown Sustainability Policy Adviser British Retail Consortium

In June BRC Members came together with Partners DP World London Gateway, and environmental charity, Hubbub to discuss the impact that retailers have on air pollution and how the industry can collaborate to help galvanise efforts. The discussion centred around three main areas.

Employee well-being Retailers have a duty of care to their employees both within their stores and drivers in their fleet and air pollution is one area where retailers can do more to protect their health. This could be starting out small and highlighting to their workforce different ways to mitigate the impacts of air pollution either in their commute to work or in their own homes. What are the next steps? Hubbub are looking to develop and share a proposal for an employee engagement and wellbeing programme and there is also scope for a retailer to potentially pilot an employee well-being programme within their head office. Awareness raising There is interest from retailers present at the roundtable discussion to continue raising the awareness of this issue with consumers and senior leadership within each respective company. What’s next? BRC and Hubbub to share “Air We Share” project, providing background information and a summary of the research on the impacts that air pollution has on individuals. This can be disseminated throughout each business to help further engage senior executives.

Policy discussions To help progress policy, there needs to be more data and measurements to use as a baseline. Currently, there are too many unknowns of what the current “state of play” is and whilst retailers want to do the right thing, it would help create a plan of action if there is shared data. What’s next? We will continue discussions with relevant policy leads within government, highlighting the challenges and barriers that retailers face in trying to secure low to zero emissions vehicles. BRC will work with DP World London Gateway to better understand the logistics and supply chain impacts to see where potential alignment might happen. The economies of scale of shipping and transporting goods has a direct impact on air pollution and this could be further analysed with a policy lens. BRC’S Better Retail Better World Is mobilising the retail industry to meet some of the biggest global challenges of the coming decades highlighted by the UN, including modern slavery and decent work, sustainable economic growth, inequalities, climate change and responsible consumption and production. Ask us a question or tweet your support using #BetterRetailBetterWorld @the_brc

46 | summer 2019 | the retailer

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