UK retailer Waitrose has confirmed it will adopt the Seafood Carbon Emissions Profiling Tool (SCEPT) to help measure and reduce carbon emissions across its seafood supply chain. The move follows a recent joint webinar with public body Seafish for the major retailer’s seafood suppliers where it introduced the tool, outlined user benefits and detailed its aspirations on how suppliers could use it.
SCEPT was created by Seafish with extensive industry input and launched in May of 2024. The online platform 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 tool’s software analyses these data and provides results which 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.
Ben Lambden, Partner & Manager, Fisheries and Aquaculture at Waitrose said: “At Waitrose, we’re committed to sourcing seafood responsibly and reducing the environmental impact of our supply chains. 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.”
Waitrose’s parent company, John Lewis Partnership, has made an organisational commitment to work towards net-zero across its operations by 2035 and across its entire supply chain by 2050. The implementation of the SCEPT into the seafood supply chain will play a key role in those ambitions.
Fellow retailer Tesco has already implemented the tool to its seafood supply chain and Waitrose’s adoption signals further momentum for a UK industry-wide approach to tackling carbon emissions.
Dr Stuart McLanaghan, Head of Responsible Sourcing at Seafish, who led the SCEPT’s development, welcomed the commitment: “It’s great to see Waitrose adopting the SCEPT. [This] 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.”
McLanaghan added that the tool, developed by Blonk Milieu Advies BV, will evolve with industry needs and aspirations.
To date 125 seafood businesses, and by chilled and frozen volume two-thirds of the UK seafood processing sector, have signed up to use it.
