There’s a new standard in town for the food retail industry: the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report. This standard provides a comprehensive set of metrics for food retail companies to organize and track ESG performance.
ESG reports include qualitative and quantitative data about three key topics. The first focuses on the environmental strides a business is making. Food retailers looking to adhere to this specific topic greatly benefit from a connected facility.
A connected facility can help your business meet ESG standards; learn how.
What is Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting?
According to the Ratio Institute, ESG consolidates food retail–specific criteria from several reporting frameworks to create a tool that can meet the food retail industry’s needs. The standard has been endorsed by the food retail industry’s major trade associations and adopted by several major retailers.
Supermarket News reported that food retailers typically track ESG performance using various non-industry-specific reporting frameworks. But this makes it difficult for investors, vendors, non-governmental organizations, and shoppers to assess company efforts. The new standard organizes metrics across several well-established voluntary reporting frameworks into an easy-to-implement reporting approach specific to food retail.
Why is ESG Important?
Many food retailers are adopting ESG and developing strategies to support it, and their reasons are clear. According to McKinsey, strong ESG performance can improve financial performance in a number of different ways, from enhancing returns on capital investments, and strengthening the community, to improving government relations and increasing worker productivity and motivation.
How a Connected Facility Supports ESG
Food retailers across the country know that leveraging data and analytics is critical to saving energy and mitigating wasted food. That’s why they’re continually investing in more real-time tracking data.
A connected facility minimizes the impact a business has on the environment and helps it sustain growth. It’s typically part of a larger strategy that includes environmental considerations across the entire supply chain and all business operations.
A connected facility can help food retailers meet ESG standards by:
- Significantly reducing energy consumption and costs: Use equipment that is connected, analyzed, and controlled by IoT to reduce operating costs, ensure system uptime and product quality, and cut energy and maintenance expenses.
- Preventing capital equipment from ending up in landfills: a connected facility can protect the environment from harmful chemicals and metals by keeping assets running at peak performance. When a business is able to shift from reactive to proactive maintenance, equipment lasts longer, can be repaired, and doesn’t run to failure.
Ask a member of our team how a connected facility can help your organization adhere to ESG standards.