English superstore giant Tesco has announced its intention to boost sales of plant-based food over the next five years as a part of a blossoming partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in an attempt to half the environmental impact of food production.
Their current goal is to increase sales of meat-free products by 300% by 2025, claiming it is the first UK retailer to make such a move.
The company wants to compound this by offering a wider array of meat-free products across 20 different categories, including ready-meals, breaded meat alternatives, sausages, burgers, party foods, pies and quiches.
In a statement, Tesco announced that it will "invest in value so that affordability is not an issue" regarding vegetarian and vegan meal options, and admitted they will be working with suppliers to encourage innovation within the sector.
They added they will be placing both meat-based and meat-free products together in the supermarket to encourage more shoppers to buy them.
Tesco and the WWF teamed up to launch the 'Sustainable Basket Metric' to decrease the environmental impact of what they refer to as the "average shopping basket" back in 2019. Thus far the project has achieved 11% of its goal to half the impact on this front.
The environmental impact is measured across seven different categories: climate change, deforestation, sustainable diets, sustainable agriculture, marine sustainability, food waste and packaging waste. The impact of each item is weighed against any of these categories that are breached in its production.
Tesco CEO Dave Lewis said: "We know from our experience tackling food waste that transparency and setting ambitious targets are the first steps towards becoming a more sustainable business. Our transparency on protein sales and our new sales targets for meat alternatives gives us the platform to becoming more sustainable and will provide our customers with even more choice.
"These measures are just part of the work we're doing with the WWF, bringing together for the first time a host of sustainability metrics to help us halve the environmental impact of food production.
"We also call on the government to do more by helping to scale up innovations and create a level playing field to ensure companies drive sustainability in their supply chains."
Tanya Steel, CEO of the WWF, said: "It's great to see this sector-leading step from Tesco. Tackling the environmental impact of what we eat and how we produce it has never been so urgent.
"WWF's Living Planet Report 2020 has revealed that, in the last 50 years, wildlife populations have declined by an average of 68%. The food system has been identified as the biggest culprit but also presents one of the greatest opportunities to reverse this trend. Rebalancing our diets is a critical part of that."
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