Waitrose has announced plans to adopt the Seafood Carbon Emissions Profiling Tool (SCEPT) to help measure and reduce carbon emissions across its seafood supply chain.
The platform, created by industry body Seafish, allows seafood businesses to generate carbon footprints for both wild-capture and aquaculture products by inputting supply chain data such as fuel use, processing, packaging and transport.
The software then analyses the data and provides results that seafood businesses can use to identify hotspots where emissions are highest in their supply chains, benchmark performance against industry averages, track progress towards their reduction targets and report carbon data with greater accuracy and transparency.
“At Waitrose, we’re committed to sourcing seafood responsibly and reducing the environmental impact of our supply chains,” said Ben Lambden, partner & manager, fisheries & aquaculture at Waitrose. “By adopting the SCEPT we will work with our seafood supply chain to receive the data we need to identify carbon hotspots and work with those suppliers to make meaningful reductions.”
This is part of a broader plan from the John Lewis Partnership to work towards net-zero across its operations by 2035 and across its entire supply chain by 2050.
Tesco has already implemented the tool in its seafood supply chain and Seafish said the further adoption by Waitrose signifies momentum for a UK industry-wide approach to tackling carbon emissions.
“It’s great to see Waitrose adopting the SCEPT,” said Dr Stuart McLanaghan, head of responsible sourcing at Seafish. “Waitrose’s commitment will further strengthen the UK seafood sector’s support to integrate the tool and we’re also currently working with other leading UK retailers to advise how they too can implement the tool.
“We remain committed to keeping the tool at the cutting edge of science, evolving with industry needs and aspirations.”
The tool was developed by Blonk Milieu Advies and so far 125 seafood businesses – accounting for two-thirds of the UK seafood-processing sector’s chilled and frozen volumes – have signed up to use it.
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