Show stockists and shoppers the sustainability work behind your brand

Who asks retailers and ecommerce brands about ESG?

Mostly the businesses that stock you, and your own customers. A department store, larger retailer or wholesale buyer may send you a sustainability questionnaire before listing you, because its own reporting can include the emissions of the products it sells. Marketplaces and B2B buyers may ask similar questions.

Shoppers ask too, usually about packaging and deliveries. A clear report gives you something factual to point to, rather than broad eco claims that can drift into greenwashing. If you sell into the EU, larger customers there may base their requests on the voluntary VSME standard for SMEs.

What makes up a retail business’s carbon footprint?

For a typical independent shop or online retailer, the footprint the report measures comes from:

• Premises energy: electricity for lighting, tills, chillers and heating in your shop, stockroom or warehouse, plus any gas
• Company vans: deliveries and collections in your own petrol, diesel or electric vans, from fuel litres or mileage
• Waste: from your contractor’s tonnage data, or estimated from bin sizes and collection frequency
• Courier deliveries you pay for, from parcel numbers, weights and distances
• Refrigerant (F-gas) leakage from chillers and air conditioning, from refrigerant added during servicing
• Water, from bills or estimated from headcount
• Business travel by air and rail, for trade shows and supplier visits, plus taxis, hotels and staff mileage
• Optionally, stock and packaging, as a spend-based estimate

For a small shop, premises electricity is often the largest measured source. As a rough example, a shop and stockroom using 25,000 kWh a year would produce around 3.3 tonnes of CO2e from electricity, using the 2026 UK grid factor of about 0.13 kg per kWh. For an online retailer with its own delivery vans, fuel can overtake that quickly. The report shows each calculation line by line, so a buyer can see exactly where your figure comes from.

There are clear limits, and it helps to know them up front. Overseas air or sea deliveries, inbound freight paid for by your suppliers and the use and disposal of the products you sell are not included. The spend-based figure for stock and packaging is a rough estimate, not a supplier-specific product footprint. The report says so plainly in its methodology appendix.

Packaging, materials and sourcing

Beyond any spend-based estimate, packaging features in your report in other ways. Product businesses answer questions about their main material inputs and any sustainability requirements they set for suppliers, so you can show that you switched to recycled mailers or that you ask suppliers about their own practices. That is exactly the kind of evidence stockists look for.

Waste is often where retailers find quick savings. Moving cardboard from general waste into a separate recycling collection often cuts both the footprint and the bill. Your action plan lists improvements like this in priority order. For more ideas, see our ESG quick wins for small businesses.

How long it takes

A shop or product business usually finishes in 30 to 45 minutes. Have your electricity and gas bills for each site, your main product and packaging types, and your waste collection details (bin sizes and how often they are emptied) to hand. If you run vans, add fuel card statements or rough annual mileage.

Answers save as you go. Your first report is free. Start your report and send that stockist a confident answer.