Looking for partners who can take something with different materials and break it down

Specsavers Australia and New Zealand is a little over one year into its sustainability journey, committed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest and to a 2030 interim goal to reduce its carbon emissions in Scopes 1 and 2 by 50% and Scope 3 by 25%.

“This is not about offsetting, which tends to be associated with being carbon neutral. We don't buy offsets; this journey is about absolute reduction,” said Cathy Rennie Matos, Specsavers ANZ’s head of sustainability.

Scope 1, 2 and 3 targets have since been validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative, she said, explaining that Scopes 1 and 2 deal with emissions generated directly by an organisation – for example, through transport and energy consumption – while Scope 3 includes upstream and downstream indirect emissions in an organisation’s value chain not already covered by Scopes 1 and 2.

“Absolute reduction, in terms of Scopes 1 and 2, is essentially that you are buying renewable electricity. But, given that over 90% of our emissions sit in Scope 3, there's a lot that has to happen in that supplier space to reach our targets. Six years isn't a long time; it’s going to be a challenge, but it’s a challenge we are prepared for,” Matos said.

During the past 12 months, efforts have been focused on setting up the internal structure and forming partnerships with other organisations to support the change. One of those partners is specialist carbon reporting software platform Emitwise, whose software will allow Specsavers to measure its carbon footprint and track progress against targets, she said. “We’re already starting to roll out this tool to our suppliers, at no cost to them. It’ll give them the information they need about their own businesses to make sustainable decisions and it will be a significant tool in delivering our collective ambitions.”

Another partner Matos said will be key is lifecycle assessment advisor 3Keel. “Working with 3Keel, we’ve taken a small selection of our key selling products and looked at the environmental impact of each stage of their lifecycles. This helps us understand what the inputs and outputs are and enables us to focus our efforts into the future as we try and make our products more sustainable. I'm not sure how much of this has been done within optics before, but we knew that for us it was a really important step and offers some great insights.”

Other important areas of ongoing work involve people and the community, sourcing sustainable materials and packaging and waste management, said Matos. “There’s a big focus on circularity and we are working with stores on finding solutions for waste that is not easily recyclable – soft plastics, for example – and we're still working on solutions around glasses recycling. We now have a recycling solution in Australia, but the infrastructure doesn't yet exist in New Zealand, so we’re trying to find a partner here who can take something that is quite complicated, like a pair of glasses, with different materials and break it down.”

Specsavers has also completed its first materiality assessment to identify the issues that matter most to its internal and external stakeholders and to ensure that the sustainability strategies are aligned with those, she said. “Support for sustainability comes from the top down. It has been incorporated into our long-term framework as a key pillar of our business and is supported at every level. We’ve also had a lot of support externally – many people are in the same boat, trying to build capability and unpack these challenges; we can learn from each other.”

Although it’s early days, Matos said it’s already been a steep learning curve, especially realising that everything takes time. “Personally, I’ve had to become more patient and adapt to longer-term planning,” she said, adding “one person can't do it all and you really have to embed sustainability across the organisation to succeed. That's something I have been focused on over the last 12 months as well.”