SDG 12, Sustainable Consumption and the UK’s Leading Retailers

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a blueprint to achieve a more sustainable future for all, but in many ways, the concept of sustainable consumption (part of SDG12) is fundamental to the transition to such a future. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that retailers have a vital role to play in promoting more sustainable patterns of consumption. This chapter provides an exploratory review of how the leading retailers in the UK are publicly addressing the issue of sustainable consumption, and the authors adopted a twin track method of enquiry. Firstly, two Internet searches were undertaken of the leading retailers’ corporate websites to identify how the retailers were publicly addressing sustainable consumption. Secondly, the authors undertook a basic observational survey of if, and how, the selected retailers looked to engage customers with sustainable consumption within their stores. The results revealed that while the majority of the selected retailers publicly emphasised their commitment to sustainable consumption on their corporate websites, there was little or no reference to the SDGs or, more specifically, to sustainable consumption within stores.