PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Food production and consumption have a major environmental impact. Making the EU food system more sustainable is crucial to achieve EU and global sustainability goals. Supermarkets play a crucial role in the EU food system. Europeans buy 70 to 80% of their food in supermarkets. Supermarkets also have a huge impact on what/how suppliers produce and what/how consumers buy. In most EU countries only a handful of supermarket chains hold 80% market share. This combined strength and market concentration makes supermarkets an exceptional lever in the food system. Superlist is a monitoring and campaigning tool, comparing supermarkets within a country on sustainability policies and practices on the topics of climate change, protein transition, sustainable agriculture, food waste and food packaging. Through public comparison, Superlist: - triggers supermarkets to compete on their sustainability policies & practices, - stimulates public policy makers to develop legislation/regulation that stimulates or requires increased sustainability efforts from supermarkets, - stimulates public policy makers to institutionalise a permanent monitoring system to continuously benchmark supermarkets. Superlist pilots have already been tested in Belgium and the Netherlands, with a proven positive effect on supermarket policies and institutionalisation of the monitoring method. This project aims to improve and expand the environmental policies and practices of supermarkets in the EU by raising awareness on retailers' sustainability performances. This will help foster competition - as in ‘a race to the top’ - (1) stimulate legislation and regulation, and (2) promote the development of permanent monitoring systems. The project follows a two-layered approach: working at both the member-state/national level and the supranational/EU level. Activities at the national level will generate evidence to support policy progress within countries and provide foundation for progress at the EU level.