Environmental Trends in Supermarket Sector Assignment

Environmental Trends in Supermarket Sector - Assignment Example There are costs associated for the supermarket sector with the environmental trends. For the right way of producing food in a sustainable manner and to consume the food as well in sustainable ways, environmental impacts should be factored into the cost of products on supermarket shelves (Russell 2007) because the supermarket sector has to incur high costs as compared to any other sector when it comes to environmental trends. This is because it is one of the largest sectors in UK. This paper will firstly discuss the environmental trends and how important they are to the businesses and then move on to their impact on the supermarket sector. The positive and negative impacts are considered and finally a conclusion is presented. The environmental trends are becoming an integral part of the economy and are thus affecting almost all the businesses. The environmental issues have now become a part of the business decision making due to their significant impact on the businesses. The importance of the environmental trends is so immense that it has been said by the former South African minister that (Black 2008) the "companies should have directors with environmental experience". Valli Moosa, the president of International Union for the Conservation of Nature says that like in all the other businesses we have marketing executives, accountancy executives and accountancy executives, there should also be environmental executives as well (Black 2008) who have a working knowledge of the environmental issues and can link the business and the environmental trends and can capitalize on their resources through mitigating the negative impacts from the business and in turn contributing to the environment as well. Environmental issues are basically defined as those problems which are created by environment. There are different environmental issues which are affecting the supermarket sector as a whole (Ellen, 2008). The environmental trends include a host of issues from reducing waste, recycling, reducing flood risk to efficiently utilizing energy sources, reducing carbon footprint and global warming. The climatic changes have impacted the biodiversity to a great extent, global warming is a huge issue due to the climatic changes and also as a result the depletion of ozone layer. The solutions to these as predicted so far include reforestation i.e. planting more trees and to use carbon sinks to absorb carbon dioxide. These all environmental trends have been impacting the businesses to a great extent as the businesses have to take into effect the negative impacts associated with these environmental trends. The business sector which is the most impacted by the environmental trends is the supermarket sector. The environmental trends specific to the supermarket sector are the carbon dioxide emissions, genetically modified (G.M.) food and the impact of climatic changes which has lead the supermarket sector to go greener and take measures which assist in mitigating the negative impact these environmental changes have been causing. The next section discusses the impact of the environmental trends on the supermarket sector in detail. Effects of the Environmental Trends on the Supermarket Sector The supermarket sec