Future‑proofing UK Food: What WWF Retail Report Reveals

WWF’s What’s in Store for the Planet 2025 report offers a timely health check on the UK grocery sector’s progress towards the ambitious target of halving the environmental impact of the average shopping basket by 2030, from a baseline of 2021.

The report shows credible progress in areas such as operational decarbonisation and recyclable packaging, but also highlights areas for improvement, such as Scope 3, agricultural data, and diets.

IGD is working to accelerate system-wide  action on areas such as climate, agriculture and diets. By focusing on these key priority areas, we can make meaningful progress towards  the WWF Basket outcomes including  economic benefits and wider social and environmental gains.

Why this matters

The WWF Basket goals are now a commercial imperative. With a cost-of-living crisis and with food inflation exceeding 4%, sourced from IGD latest inflation report, this report shows the consequences of climate change are often buried, and that pressures on supply chains and consumer pockets continue to grow. To tackle this, we must deliver system-wide action on key areas of resilience, environmental sustainability and health to pave the way for a commercially viable and secure future.

Climate: progress on operations, but supply chain risks. and data gaps remain

Retailers are making positive headway on operations (Scope 1 & 2), with progress approaching the halfway mark, but are falling behind on Scope 3 where most emissions sit. Although, almost all retailers are capturing and providing this data, reported progress on emissions may reflect variations and the quality of data rather than real supply‑chain decarbonisation. Overall, climate delivery is mixed: credible momentum in key areas, such as energy, fleets, heating and refrigeration, yet the absence of robust Scope 3 data systems and supplier SBT coverage leaves resilience and achieving targets at risk.

WWF’s recommended actions include: systems to capture accurate and comprehensive Scope 3 data, wider supply chain science-based targets coverage, and nature‑positive transition planning to cut FLAG emissions.

Commercial implications

• Positive progress on Scope 1 & 2 emissions is partly due to the price instability of fossil fuels increasing retailer operational costs. Decarbonising is a meaningful commercial strategy that can help to curb further food inflation.

• Comprehensive Scope 3 data is critical for mobilising financial capital. WWF highlights the Soil Association’s Exchange Market which is an example of one initiative that shows how Scope 3 data can be obtained and financially rewarded to incentivise climate transition progress. This data can be practically used to build more resilient farms and supply chains to reduce price volatility.

What IGD is doing in this area

• Net Zero Transition Plan for the UK Food System: provides an integrated national plan for the net zero transition through key actions and levers for  progress.

o  IGD recently released a progress report which highlights key case studies and commentaries that demonstrate how actors across the system care already making progress towards net zero goals.

• Food Supply Chain Sustainability Framework: brings together best practice and guidance for suppliers on key sustainability priorities.

o   The Framework and its guidance will provide the opportunity to reduce complexity and give shared reference points on sustainability priorities for suppliers and manufacturing customers, supporting greater collective progress to net zero.

Agriculture: farm data and incentives are now P&L issues

On UK fruit and veg, performance is positive, already exceeding the robust scheme target for fruit and veg to be produced under a biodiversity and soil scheme. Although, the global picture is incomplete and grains are falling behind due to weak supply chain integration. Farm‑level GHG footprinting coverage has slipped, and sustainable‑water sourcing is only partially assessed - so while domestic schemes are encouraging, system‑wide agricultural delivery remains off‑track until data capture and farm‑level transparency improve.

WWF’s recommended actions: put in place systems to gather and process on‑farm data that aligns with the WWF Basket, and implement a supplier engagement strategy for own‑label suppliers.

Commercial implications

• Farm‑level data leads to costed action: footprinting and baselining can equip farmers with knowledge to introduce more nature friendly and less environmentally impacting farming practices. This knowledge benefits two-fold through economic efficiency by reducing input costs, such as fuel and fertiliser, and by stabilising crop health and improving yields, essential for supply chain resilience.

• Supply chain integration and access to finance: weak grains traceability makes it difficult for arable farms to access financing that can future-proof their business, especially as this sector is strongly affected by climate change, with some farmers reporting a 50% drop in yields. WWF notes grain traceability as an issue, although supply chain integration is a common theme across sectors, not a standalone sector issue.

What IGD is doing in this area

• Value case for baselining England’s farmland: This strategic case details how a national environmental baseline will unlock the full value potential from England’s farmland.

o   WWF recommends a uniform requirement for GHG footprinting or via certification schemes. IGD’s value case outlines how a single vision through a co-ordinated, nation-wide action plan can help achieve the objectives of the WWF Basket whilst avoiding fragmented efforts, maximising value for money, and delivering system-wide benefits.

Diets - UK retail is cutting carbon but diets remain the missing link

UK grocery protein sales remain heavily dominated by livestock protein and behind target. Around 77% of protein sales still come from meat, dairy and eggs. By comparison Livewell, the WWF dietary approach promoting healthy eating and planetary health, recommends no more than 40% of protein sales should come from livestock, with 30% each from seafood and plant-based sources of protein.

In composite products, such as ready meals, there are positive signs with the share of meat-based sales has fallen from 61% to 49% in a single year, offset by growth in vegetarian and vegan options. Across the wider basket, sales are moving incrementally closer to the Eatwell Guide, supported by improvements in fruit and vegetable share. Although, this may be attributed to rising ingredient cost prices for meat-based proteins causing product engineering based on improving margins, IGD’s inflation report can be found here.

Seafood is another critical piece of the nutrition puzzle. Healthier, lower-carbon diets require higher consumption of sustainable fish, yet climate change and overfishing already threaten future supply and affordability.

WWF’s recommended actions: put in place systems and processes to capture, assess and disclose protein sales at the ingredient-level and make healthy and sustainable diets strategies publicly available.

Commercial implications

• UK diets remain heavily dominated by livestock protein sources, containing twice as much meat as the global average. This matters not just for climate goals but for affordability and resilience. WWF highlights that beef and pork are forecast to see the greatest future price increases, exposing households to higher costs while leaving retailers vulnerable to climate-driven supply shocks.

• Encouragingly, the report also highlights what progress looks like when commercial and health goals align, with the decrease in meat-based composite product sales. A strong example is Lidl GB’s public commitments on plant-based protein and fruit and vegetable sales, which illustrate the type of quantified targets the sector may needs to adopt more widely.

What IGD is doing in this area

• IGD has produced an iterative Framework for Population Diet Change which highlights how multiple levers must work together to drive sustained change.

o   By pulling on several of these levers, particularly senior leadership buy-in through ‘Building the value case’, the process of reporting food sales can become more embedded and scalable.

• Due to climate change being the greatest threat to the UK food system, IGD has created a climate risk assessment of the UK food system.

o   This assessment aims to quantify the financial impact of physical climate risks on the UK food system up to 2050, based on ten critical commodities. The model represents a useful tool for businesses to identify what the impact of expected climate risk is likely to be on certain products.

Concluding thoughts

This report highlights that there has been meaningful progress in some areas that should be shared and learned from, while there are key areas of collective action that we must urgently address as a food system. The climate transition and the agricultural transition require one integrated action programme for the system to deliver meaningful change.

The next phase of population diet change is translating targets into behaviour change. Ingredient-level data, healthier defaults, own-label reformulation and smarter promotions will be essential if retailers are to shift diets at pace and scale.

Ultimately, the climate and dietary transition are no longer optional. They are becoming integral to commercial strategy for protecting affordability, strengthening supply resilience and delivering long-term sustainable growth.

For more information or if you can contribute to this ongoing work, please contact [email protected] or contact IGD’s Health team: [email protected]