Tesco and Society
What matters now:
Over 75 million shopping trips a week
Our Three Big Ambitions
Create new opportunities for millions of young people around the world
Help and encourage our colleagues and customers to live healthier lives
Lead in reducing food waste globally
... by inspiring, equipping and enabling millions of young people to succeed in the world of work.
Across the world, many communities are suffering from crisis levels of youth unemployment.
As a major global retailer, we create opportunities wherever we operate - for colleagues in their careers, and for suppliers looking to grow their businesses.
But we want to do more and make a bigger contribution to this challenge.
... and through this help to tackle the global obesity crisis.
Health matters to all of us. We want to enjoy active and healthy lives. But many of us lack the money, time and motivation to make this our reality.
Food is at the centre of this challenge and for many people it is a highly emotive issues - not enough of the 'right' stuff, too much of the 'wrong' stuff.
As one of the world's biggest food providers, we want to help change this.
... by working with our producers and suppliers and helping the customers we serve to find ways to reduce food waste.
Around one third of the world's food is never eaten – it's thrown away or left to rot. At Tesco, we buy, move and sell food – it's what we do, and we do it at scale, all over the world.
This means we can find out where waste happend, and why. We can track down waste – from farmer's field to the customer's fridge.
Our Essentials
Trading Responsibly
Putting our customers first and working with our suppliers to innovate and provide high quality products
Reducing our Impact on the Environment
Aiming to be a zero-carbon business by 2050 and to use scarce resources responsibly, including in our supply chain
Being a Great Employer
Creating inspiring work that makes our colleagues happy and proud of what they do
Supporting Local Communities
Being a good neighbour in our local communities and running our business to the highest standards
Trading is what we do at Tesco. We buy, move and sell products – at scale. Each week our customers make over 75 million shopping trips to buy products sourced from tens of thousands of suppliers, in over 70 countries around the world.
Nothing matters more to Tesco than the trust our customers place in us. If we are to thrive as a business, we must put our customers first and listen to their needs, their hopes and their concerns and respond to meet them.
We also know that our success as a business, and as an industry, is based on what we can offer customers. And what we can offer customers depends on how we work together as a supply chain.
Climate change is the biggest environmental threat the world faces. It will have a profound impact on the way we live – rising sea levels, extreme weather events, displaced populations, destruction of ecosystems, an impact on food production and increased water scarcity.
For many years, we have worked hard to reduce emissions in the fight against climate change. We recognise that our efforts to reduce our environmental impact need to go wider than our carbon footprint. They also need to cover other resources we rely on, ensuring we use them as efficiently as possible.
People are the foundation of our success and the key to our future. We employ over 500,000 colleagues worldwide. We want to support and inspire them with great leadership and the right training and development programmes so they are happy at work.
At the heart of this is one word: opportunity. Giving people opportunities is embedded in the character of our company. It means that if you are prepared to put the work in, there is always an opportunity to get on.
Our customers, colleagues and stakeholders expect us to live up to our responsibilities as a market leader by running our business in a responsible and accountable manner, taking a lead on issues of wider social concern and helping to build thriving local communities wherever we operate.
We must be a good corporate citizen in everything we do, from the way we run the business through to the way we work in every community.
At its simplest, being a good corporate citizen means making sure a strong governance framework is in place. And it is also about being in a good neighbour in every community in which we do business.
Latest news
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23 May 2013 By Rebecca Shelley
It may sound obvious, but Tesco wouldn’t be the company it is today, without our customers. Since we were founded 94 years ago, we’ve grown as a business because customers have chosen to shop with us, week after week. Our success is based on what we can offer customers and we do not take it for granted.
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13 May 2013 By Kevin Grace
Tesco and the Bangladesh garment industry
The death toll at the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka, at the time of writing, stands at more than a thousand. Such is the scale and horror of the disaster that it has drawn the world’s attention and through the media it has touched customers. They have responded with empathy and deep concern, asking searching questions of their retailers. They want to know that this tragedy will change the industry in Bangladesh. Tesco did not use factories in the Rana Plaza building, but...
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29 April 2013 By Robin Terrell
As anyone who has recently started a new job will tell you, in your first few weeks you’re constantly being asked ‘how are you getting on?’ and ‘what’s it like?’ The answer to the first question is easy. My first few weeks at Tesco have been great. But I thought I’d take this opportunity to share my first impressions and answer the second question in a little more detail.
