One of Sainsbury’s most senior sustainability leads is leaving the company as part of a corporate restructure that will see the department shrink.
Group head of environmental sustainability, Celia Cole, will leave the business next month after 13 years of working for the supermarket across different departments.
She has led the sustainability team on environmental issues including deforestation, nature positivity, water stewardship, food waste, circular economy and sustainable sourcing.
Prior to her four-year stint as environmental sustainability head, Cole held several positions across corporate responsibility and sustainable and ethical sourcing.
Her redundancy is part of Sainsbury’s wider reshuffle to its central management structures, which the company announced in January along with 3,000 job losses.
The Grocer understands fellow group head of environment, Jo Ennion, is staying in the business as part of what was previously the corporate responsibility & sustainability leadership team – and which is now being rebranded as ‘sustainability’ only and will report directly into chief marketing officer Mark Given.
It is understood that corporate responsibility has been integrated into the business across all teams and leadership in recent years, and that the recent update is a reflection of that.
As reported last month, Given was promoted to chief marketing, data and sustainability officer, expanding his remit to include oversight of all of the supermarket’s data and analytics efforts, as well as its sustainability and net zero ambitions.
Read more: Sainsbury’s cuts 3,000 jobs as cafés close for good
Other casualties in the sustainability team were expected as part of the cost-cutting move, The Grocer understands.
Critics have previously said that having sustainability teams under marketing umbrellas signals a business’s lack of ambition in having a commercial and finance strategy that is in line with environmental targets.
One former senior retail leader argued “marketing is just a number of different functions that picks up sustainability and it totally skews the role sustainability plays because it will be under the marketing lens”.
Companies have been restructuring their corporate responsibility and sustainability divisions in the face of economic challenges – Unilever recently folding together its sustainability and external communications departments, only months after rolling back some of its environmental targets.
Mars is also said to be restructuring after chief sustainability officer Barry Parkin announced he would be retiring from his role in March.
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