Skip to main content

Tesco Partnership (2018-2023) 

Our food system is one of the biggest drivers of climate change and nature loss. From 2018 until 2023, WWF and Tesco worked in partnership to address these impacts, with a shared ambition to halve the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets. 

Following this partnership, WWF and Tesco are continuing to collaborate on achieving this ambition alongside other major UK food businesses via WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature. 

Person carrying shopping bag in supermarket - © Shutterstock.jpg

WWF and Tesco’s shared goal of halving the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets underpinned the development of the WWF Basket - a series of outcomes measures for food retailers to address seven major impact areas: climate, agriculture, marine sustainability, deforestation and conversion, diets, packaging and food waste.  

As well as working to develop the WWF Basket, WWF has now established our Retailers' Commitment for Nature – a cross sector collaboration to address environmental impacts. Five leading UK retailers, alongside Tesco, are now aligned to our vision of halving the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets by 2030.  

You can find out more about the WWF Basket and WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature here

Field of wheat - Norfolk - UK - © Jiri Rezac / WWF-UK.jpg

Other achievements of the WWF Tesco partnership include:   

  • Establishing an Innovation Connections programme, which saw five cutting-edge innovations receive funding and the opportunity to trial their innovations with leading Tesco suppliers.   
  • Published industry-leading research to better establish the scale of on-farm food waste, setting a roadmap to tackle on-farm waste. 
  • Published a landmark report on the opportunities for alternative animal feed, most notably, insect feed, which has the potential to replace 540,000 tonnes of feed such as soy and fishmeal by 2050. 
  • Made significant progress on the sustainable agriculture agenda, supporting the transition in Tesco supply chains, while also providing support to high-risk water catchments, both in the UK and internationally.  
  • Led the way in establishing the UK Soy Manifesto, a collective industry commitment to work together on the aim of ensuring UK soy is verified deforestation and conversion free by 2025.  
  • Supported the development of the seafood jurisdictional initiative – with an initial focus on tuna - that goes beyond current certification schemes, to take into account impacts to the wider ecosystem as well as the social impacts of seafood production. 

WWF will continue to work directly with food retailers as we challenge them to go further and faster in addressing the nature and climate impacts of our food system. Find out more about why we need to fix our food system here 

WWF UK continues to receive donations from Tesco linked to our F&F and Home collaborations, as well as donations made by customers through Tesco’s Clubcard donation programme.

WWF x Tesco Partnership

WWF Tesco partnership update from Kate Norgrove, Executive Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at WWF.