Own-brand products are deforestation and conversion free by December 2025
Contribute towards a nature positive future
Nature is essential for the health of our planet, stability of our economy and resilience of our business. From forests and soil to freshwater and oceans, the natural world provides the food our customers eat and the products they buy. At Sainsbury’s, we depend on nature and want to ensure that through our direct operations, our supply chains and wider system, we are working to protect and regenerate it.
Against the continued threats to nature from climate change, land and sea use change, pollution and the exploitation of natural resources, we have more work to do than ever before to make sure that the planet and the people who support the production of our food are protected from these risks, and that we work in step with the natural world to deliver good nutritious food to everyone for generations to come.
Our ambition
Our progress and highlights
Founding members
of the UK Soy Manifesto
100%
of the palm oil used in our own-brand products is certified sustainable
Over 5m
native trees planted across the UK through our partnership with The Woodland Trust
Our targets to contribute towards a nature positive future
A nature-positive world is one where “there is more biodiversity globally in 2030 than there was in 2020” (IUCN, 2020, Global Goal for Nature, 2020).
Our current targets beneath this ambition are timebound, ambitious, and focus on how we are contributing to a nature-positive world. We reference under this ambition existing targets which are instrumental in achieving a nature-positive future, such as achieving net zero emissions to limit the impacts of climate change on nature. Crucially, our targets also extend to include nature impacts beyond our direct operations. We aim to achieve the following:
- Ensure our own brand products are deforestation and conversion (DCF) free by 2025 – with a cut-off date of 2020
- Support multi-year investments to transform Production Landscapes and restore areas of high nature value. For example, in soy production landscapes in Brazil, palm oil plantations in Indonesia and produce production landscapes in Peru
- All our key raw materials and ingredients have responsible sourcing roadmaps embedded within our supply chains by 2025
- Provide peat-free solutions to customers ahead of the intended legislative deadlines in 2026 and 2030
These targets will be reported on regularly and transparently. They will also be reviewed at appropriate intervals (at least every three years) in line with progress and developments in this space. We also continue to explore possible new nature-related targets in line with our adoption of the TNFD.
Our progress so far
| Baseline | Performance | Target | ||
| 2019 CY | 2023 CY | 2024 CY | 2025 CY | |
| Timber sourced to an independent sustainability standard (%) | 58.2% | 92.9% | 98.0% | 100% |
| Palm oil sourced to an independent standard - Mass-Balance / Segregated / IP (%) | 99.1% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Soy independently certified - Credits / Mass-Balance / Segregated (%) | 5.8% | 88.3% | 96.7% | 100% |
| 2019 CY | 2023/24 FY | 2024/25 FY | 2025 CY | |
| Cotton sourced to an independent sustainability standard (%) | 76.0% | 97.4% | 98.2% | 100% |
| 2023/24 FY | 2023/24 FY | 2024/25 FY | 2025/26 FY | |
| Leather tonnage from tanneries certified to a minimum of bronze level by LWG (%) | 96.4% | 96.4% | 98.9% | 100% |
| Manmade cellulosic fibres sourced to an independent environmental standard (%) | 95.3% | 95.3% | 91.4% | 100% |
| 2023 CY | 2023 CY | 2024 CY | 2025 CY | |
| Volumes of cocoa bean equivalent certified (%) | 47.0% | 47.0% | 65.4% | 100% |
| 2024 CY | 2023 CY | 2024 CY | 2025 CY | |
| Volumes of certified coffee (%) | 64.0% | N/A | 64.0% | 100% |
| 2019/20 FY | 2023/24 FY | 2024/25 FY | 2025/26 FY | |
| Woodland trees planted (cumulative number) | 493,750 | 1,292,583 | 1,425,461 | 1,500,000 |
CY = Calendar Year. FY = Financial Year
For further information on our performance, please visit our Reports & Policies page for our Plan for Better report or read our full sustainability results in our Plan for Better Databook
Our approach
To help protect nature across our supply chains, we need to ensure we source our products sustainably. For us, ‘sustainable sourcing’ means ensuring the origins of the materials in supply chains are sufficiently known and our suppliers are continuously progressing to address the social and environmental impacts of our products.
We aim to protect nature within our business and supply chains, and we have set targets to sustainably source key raw materials from soy to seafood and coffee to provide good food, in all senses, to our customers.
Sustainable sourcing is foundational to our business resilience and integral to delivering our Plan for Better, which focuses on being Better for you, Better for the planet, and Better for everyone. It helps us secure a safe, reliable, and affordable supply of key raw materials while mitigating environmental and human rights risks.
To help protect nature, we are setting targets to sustainably source key raw materials from soy to seafood and coffee ensuring our own-brand product supply chains are deforestation and conversion free by 2025. We are also working with suppliers to help them set Net Zero commitments and improve animal welfare and responsible antibiotic stewardship.
Our approach includes understanding our impacts through independent data and due diligence, prioritising salient issues, developing supply chain-specific strategies, and collaborating with suppliers and industry stakeholders to drive systemic change. We monitor and communicate our progress to ensure transparency and accountability.
This overview reflects our commitment to sourcing with integrity and integrating sustainable sourcing into our operations.
For more details, please visit our full Sustainable Sourcing page.
Deforestation and land conversion are among the most pressing global threats to biodiversity and the health of our planet’s ecosystems. The expansion of agricultural land—particularly for crops like soy and palm oil, or for livestock grazing—has had a devastating impact on tropical rainforests and woodland savannahs, which are vital for global ecological balance.
As a business, we recognise the urgency of this issue and are committed to playing our part in protecting nature. We are working both within our supply chain and across the wider sector to ensure that the products we sell are deforestation and conversion free.
We are committed to having all our own-brand products be deforestation and conversion free by 2025. This means avoiding the clearance of forests and natural ecosystems, which helps preserve habitats for wildlife, maintain soil health, support natural flood management, and reduce carbon emissions.
To achieve this, we have established robust standards for how products are grown or made. These include the use of certification schemes that address key risks in supply chains, such as deforestation and land conversion. Certification has proven to be a valuable tool enabling us to monitor progress, enhance transparency, and help customers identify sustainably sourced products. Thanks to strong customer demand, we are proud to be a global leader in meeting many of these standards.
However, we know that certification alone is not enough. As supply chains become more complex and expectations around traceability and transparency increase, we are going further. We are enhancing our ability to trace raw materials back to their origin and are investing in technological monitoring systems to improve oversight.
Ultimately, we believe that delivering lasting change requires collaboration. That’s why we are working not only within our own operations but also across the value chain to drive continuous improvement in sustainability and responsible sourcing.
The protection and regeneration of nature requires collaboration and engagement with our suppliers and the wider industry. We’re partnering to drive nature positive agriculture and support farmers to measure biodiversity improvements and continuing to work on traceability to more robustly assess nature-related issues across our supply chain so we can work to address challenges and promote nature.
For example, we’ve partnered with Land App, a mapping tool that helps our UK farmers gain insights on biodiversity, habitat health and nature-related risks across the land they manage, which helps us identify areas to work collaboratively to promote nature.
It is crucial to work collaboratively to address the environmental challenges in high-risk locations. We co-fund initiatives with other food businesses who also source from these regions, including on-the-ground work to protect and restore forests and natural habitats and support sustainable farming in landscapes where key raw materials are grown. This helps to build long-term resilience in the areas we source from and improve the livelihoods of people who work in the landscape. Together with our supply chain partners, we are co-funding a landscape level programme in Ghana, Asunafo-Asutifi Hotspot intervention Area (HIA) which focuses on community-led forest protection. The project will provide technical assistance, equipment and training for forest fringe communities to rehabilitate degraded on-reserve areas and actively protect forest reserves in a key cocoa production region. Through working with smallholder farmers to adopt agroforestry practices, the project aims to reduce deforestation in the landscape and, over multiple years, improve smallholder incomes, improve biodiversity and reduce GHG emissions
Working in collaboration
We need to work together to realise a nature positive future, since nature challenges do not recognise business or geographical boundaries.
We’re partnering to drive sustainable agricultural practices and support farmers to measure biodiversity improvements and continuing to work on traceability to more robustly assess nature-related issues across our supply chain so we can work to address challenges and restore nature.
We work closely with our peers, suppliers, government, and other key stakeholders on shared environmental challenges such as reducing scope 3 emissions and improving water quality and stress. We also think it is critical to consider the interdependencies between nature and social systems to avoid unintended consequences and maximise the positive impact of any interventions we make.
For example, we’ve partnered with Land App, a mapping tool that helps our UK farmers gain insights on biodiversity, habitat health and nature-related risks across the land they manage, which helps us identify areas to work collaboratively to promote nature.
The scale of the deforestation challenge is huge, and systemic change will not happen if we act alone. Collaboration is therefore key to eliminating deforestation and land conversion globally. Signing up to the WWF Retailers' Commitment for Nature supports alignment in the UK retail sector on tackling the key environmental challenges that face us.
We have also engaged with partners to drive positive change in supply chains on deforestation and land conversion through multi-stakeholder initiatives.
Consumer Goods Forum Forest Positive Coalition
We’re members of the CGF Forest Positive Coalition of Action, made up of 18 member companies committed to moving efficiently and quickly toward a forest-positive future. With a collective market value of USD 1.8 trillion (GBP 1.3 trillion), these member companies are in a leading position to leverage collective action and accelerate systemic efforts to remove deforestation, forest degradation and conversion from key commodity supply chains.
Our aim in participating in the implementation of these roadmaps is to drive collaborative efforts to accelerate the removal of commodity-driven deforestation and human rights abuses from individual supply chains and drive transformational change in key commodity landscapes.
ForestMind
We are one of the first companies to collaborate with NGOs, geospatial service providers, data providers and academics on the UK government-funded Satellite Applications Catapult ForestMind initiative, which launched in 2020. This is a £4 million project part-funded by the European Space Agency, which we have worked with on trials for soy satellite mapping. The programme aims to use satellite technology to monitor and track the impacts of sourcing from forest areas, so that immediate action can be taken when a deforestation issue is identified.
UK Soy Manifesto
To tackle deforestation and conversion driven by soy production at scale, we believe that collective industry effort is the only way to ensure DCF supply chains for soy. We are signatories to the UK Soy Manifesto, which aims to ensure that all physical shipments of soy to the UK are DCF. From September 2022 our supplier requirements for soy require all our suppliers also become signatories to the UK Soy Manifesto and specifically commit to requiring their own suppliers to match and cascade these commitments.
Landscape Initiative Projects
At Sainsbury’s, we support landscape initiative projects both in the UK, and across the world, to address the root causes of deforestation and conversion. We are supporting farmers in Brazil and Indonesia on specific key commodities and supporting projects that are working to regenerate entire ecosystems in South Africa and Peru.
Case study
Nectar and Sainsburys strengthen partnerships with the Woodland Trust
Since 2004, Sainsbury’s has supported the Woodland Trust, raising over £14 million, planting over 5.1 million native trees and protecting more than 2,000 acres of woodland, which has the potential to mitigate over 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. To celebrate our 20-year collaboration, we announced a new agroforestry initiative alongside Woodland Trust. Currently, only 3.3 per cent of UK farmland practices agroforestry, which is below the European average. The Trust will help farmers create planting plans to integrate trees into their land, promoting resilient practices and protecting the environment.
Nectar360, which manages Sainsbury’s Nectar loyalty scheme, also began working with the trust in 2021 and has extended its partnership to 2027, allowing customers to support conservation while earning rewards.
Customers can earn 20 points per £1 spent on Woodland Trust memberships and triple points on certain Sainsbury’s items for Woodland Trust members.
Case study
Restoring habitat and community agrobiodiversity
Since 2014 we have supported a habitat restoration and community agrobiodiversity project in Ica Valley in Peru, in collaboration with our supplier Barfoots, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, and a local NGO, Huarango Nature. The establishment of the first regional Native Plant Conservation Centre has protected thousands of useful native threatened plants whilst teaching generations of children on their use and value for well-being, resilience, agriculture, and medicine.
A forest planted by Huarango Nature at the start of our collaboration, initially with 18 dry forest plant species, now boasts over 80 native species and provides habitat for a diverse array of animal and bird life. The growing forest also increases shade, water percolation into the ground which recharges groundwater aquifers, and soil fertility. Growers involved are experiencing benefits such as flood and drought resilience, carbon capture, enhanced pollination, natural pest management, increased biodiversity, and reduced soil erosion, wind damage, and pollution as the forest areas act as a buffer.
This project demonstrates how food supply chains and conservation science can contribute to restoring native biodiversity and supporting local communities, while improving climate resilience.
Case study
Investing in DCF soy production in Brazil
Sainsbury’s is a leading investor in the Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF), an initiative to promote the production and trading of responsible soy in the Cerrado region of Brazil, the world’s most biodiverse tropical savannah. Half the Cerrado has already been converted and rates continue to increase. RCF offers low interest loans to farmers on the condition they do not deforest or convert any forests or natural vegetation on their farms and preserve natural ecosystems – an undertaking beyond what is legally required.
We have committed to extending our investment in RCF from 2026/27 to 2030/31, unlocking up to $10 million of additional funding from the UK Government’s Mobilising Finance for Forests (MFF) programme from 2025- 2030 and equivalent funding from the Dutch government.
Our involvement in RCF supports a resilient, DCF soy supply chain from this region that is crucial for our poultry due to its high protein content. It is also more carbon-efficient: RCF farms have an estimated footprint of 0.5 tCO2/ tonne compared with other farms in Northern Brazil which average 2.3 tCO2/ tonne.
