Collaboration
Home-Improvement Retailers Across the World Come Together to Address Scope 3 Emissions

This week at the 9th Global DIY-Summit in Berlin, EDRA/GHIN — the global trade bodies for home-improvement retailers — launched a collaborative taskforce to help the sector reduce its Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions — those that come from retailers’ supply chains and from consumer use of their products.

The founding members of the taskforce are Adeo (Europe, South America, South Africa) Bunnings (Australia & New Zealand); Cainz (Japan); The Home Depot (North America); Hornbach (Europe); Kesko (Scandinavia); Kingfisher plc (UK & Europe); OBI (Europe) and Sodimac (South America).

“Climate change is a threat none of us can afford to ignore. For home-improvement retailers, this is a positive move where we can help them find ways to come together to address one of the fundamental environmental issues for our planet, while developing their business,” says EDRA/GHIN General Secretary John Herbert. “With 224 retail companies in 78 countries, what makes EDRA/GHIN unique is that we really can bring together so much of the world of home improvement to unite around this common threat. While we’ve held forums on what actions retailers are taking, announcing this at the 9th Global DIY-Summit — in front of hundreds of retailers and many of their suppliers — is a great way to launch this new initiative.”

As is the case for many types of retailers, Scope 3 emissions make up the bulk of their carbon emissions; in the case of home-improvement retailers, it’s more than 90 percent. Given the scale of their impact, they are the most important, but also notoriously difficult to address, as they fall outside of retailers’ direct operational control.

There are a range of different approaches and methods used to measure and report on companies’ Scope 3 carbon footprints. This causes confusion and inefficiencies for retailers trying to lower their emissions across their value chains and creates an additional burden on their suppliers — the home-improvement product manufacturers.

The EDRA/GHIN Scope 3 taskforce will aim to address this challenge by agreeing on more consistent methodologies in how carbon data is treated through the supply chain and sharing best practices in both the reporting and accelerating the industry’s progress in reducing Scope 3 emissions. These learnings will also be shared with a wider learning group for all EDRA/GHIN members to benefit from.

Scope 3 spans the entire supply chain; so, EDRA/GHIN Members will also be talking to its suppliers, on a pre-competitive basis, to see how they can encourage innovation and work towards a more circular and carbon-efficient economy.

“As retailers, reducing emissions in how our products are made and used is our biggest challenge; but it’s also an opportunity,” asserts Thierry Garnier, President of EDRA/GHIN and Group CEO of Kingfisher. “Many of the products we sell help customers afford to create better homes that are more resource efficient, using less energy and water. While a number of EDRA/GHIN members have been working on measuring and addressing their Scope 3 impacts in their own businesses, it is a highly complex area with many shared challenges. By coming together, hopefully we can find more consistent, simpler ways to drive down our emissions. I invite home-improvement retailers from around the world to join us in this new taskforce.”