Turn everyday retail choices into sustainable consumption

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

Watsons Türkiye operates the Watsons health and beauty retail chain, a store and e-commerce business with nearly 4,000 employees.

Retail sustainability work usually stops at the boundary of the company's own operations: energy in stores, packaging on shelves, logistics between the two. The consumption decisions customers make after the purchase, and the social conditions of the small producers behind some of the products, sit outside that boundary and are rarely measured at all.

The company's response was to build a participation platform rather than a reporting exercise. Launched in 2019, Watsons Goodness Movement sets out to move beyond legal requirements and sector standards by placing customers, employees, suppliers, business partners and non-governmental organisations inside a shared impact ecosystem, so that behaviour change in daily life becomes a measurable outcome alongside operational performance.

Six projects give the platform its structure, covering forest protection and afforestation, animal welfare, strengthening women's labour and employment, widening the availability of sustainable living products, and raising awareness of sustainable living.

Governance sits with a Sustainability Management Committee operating under the General Manager and the management team. Unit champions are appointed for three impact areas — Planet, People and Product — so that delivery is distributed across functions rather than held inside a single department.

Location of the initiative: Türkiye — nationwide store network and digital sales channels

The platform works through three delivery mechanisms that run in parallel rather than as separate campaigns: long-term partnerships with non-governmental organisations, customer participation expressed through purchasing choices, and employee participation expressed through volunteering.

Partnerships supply the specialist capability the retailer does not hold. Afforestation and forest protection are delivered with the TEMA Foundation, support for women's labour with KEDV (Foundation for the Support of Women's Work), which works with women's cooperatives, and animal welfare with HAÇİKO. Each partnership is set up as a multi-year relationship rather than a single donation, which allows targets to be set and progress to be tracked between reporting periods.

The retail channel is the second mechanism. Products made by women's cooperatives are placed in stores and digital sales channels and sold without a profit margin, so the commercial infrastructure of the chain — shelf space, listings, logistics, online merchandising — is used to give small producers a route to a national customer base. Sustainable living ranges are grouped into dedicated aisles so that the lower-impact option is visible at the point of decision rather than hidden inside a category.

Employee volunteering is the third mechanism, giving staff a direct role in the field activities rather than a passive communications role.

Measurement is deliberately multi-source. Effects are tracked across three domains — environmental, social and behavioural — using project-level performance indicators, data supplied by the partner non-governmental organisations, sales data, store data and customer research. Using several independent channels means a claim about behaviour change can be cross-checked against what customers actually bought, which is what allows the programme to report behavioural outcomes rather than reach alone.

Figure 1: The six campaign strands of the Watsons Goodness Movement, covering renewable energy, forests, animal welfare, women's labour, women's employment and sustainable living products

Figure 2: Employees and business partners at the tree-planting event marking 500,000 saplings, held at the Kütahya Gevrekler reforestation site

Sustainability impact

Climate

The programme does not target the company's own Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions, which are handled through separate operational workstreams. Its climate contribution is indirect and runs through two routes: land-based carbon and consumer behaviour.

Afforestation carried out with the TEMA Foundation has reached 500,000 saplings planted to date, contributing to the afforestation of an area of approximately 383 football pitches. The stated target is to reach 1 million saplings by 2030, which is a target rather than an achieved result.

On the demand side, 6 out of every 10 customers who participated in the survey reported that they had reduced their consumption of single-use plastic and paper, while 4 in 10 reported that they were purchasing sustainable products more often than before. These are self-reported behavioural shifts, not measured emissions reductions.

Nature

Forest protection and afforestation are the primary nature outcomes. The total area covered by the 500,000 saplings planted to date is approximately 280 hectares — equivalent to 383 football pitches — and these efforts were carried out through a foundation that managed site selection, planting, and follow-up activities.

Animal welfare forms a separate strand of the platform, delivered with HAÇİKO, which extends the programme beyond habitat into the treatment of animals themselves.

The sustainable living ranges address resource use at the point of consumption, with 97 per cent of customers surveyed reporting that they have brought at least one sustainable product into their lives.

Social

The women's labour programme delivered with KEDV works with four women's cooperatives and supports approximately 1,000 women. Since 2020, 150,000 products made by those cooperatives have been sold through the chain, creating approximately TRY 11 million of economic value for the producers.

Because the products are sold without a profit margin, the value stays with the cooperatives rather than being shared with the retailer, which is what turns shelf space into an income transfer instead of a sourcing arrangement.

Customer-facing results show the platform reaching beyond awareness: 70 per cent of customers surveyed noticed the sustainable living aisles, 40 per cent began buying sustainable products more frequently, 60 per cent reduced single-use plastic and paper consumption and 97 per cent adopted at least one sustainable product.

Communications, awareness and stakeholder participation activity reached a total of 150 million people in 2025 alone.

Employees participate through volunteering, which gives the workforce a direct role in delivery rather than a communications role only.

Business impact

Benefits

The commercial benefit is concentrated in customer relationships and range performance rather than in cost reduction. Watsons Türkiye has continued to strengthen the commercial integration of sustainability, with sustainable products accounting for 14.3 per cent of total sales in 2025. This reflects growing customer demand for more sustainable choices and demonstrates that sustainability is increasingly embedded both in customers' purchasing decisions and in Watsons Türkiye's commercial strategy. The continued expansion and performance of the Sustainable Living product range further reinforces this shift, translating sustainability initiatives into measurable category demand and customer engagement.

Customer research provides further evidence of this commercial impact: 70 per cent of customers noticed the Sustainable Living aisles, while 40 per cent reported that they had started buying sustainable products more often. This represents a measurable shift in purchasing behaviour linked to a merchandising and communications decision. Reaching 150 million people in 2025 also gives the retail brand a communications asset grounded in delivered projects and customer engagement rather than in advertising claims.

Supplier and partner relationships represent a second important benefit. A strong example is Watsons Türkiye's collaboration with KEDV. Since 2020, 150,000 products produced by women-led cooperatives have been sold through Watsons channels, generating approximately TRY 11 million in economic value and supporting around 200 women producers across four cooperatives. The products are currently available in 198 Watsons stores, giving women producers access to a nationwide retail network and creating a scalable route to market for cooperative products. Through this model, Watsons Türkiye combines commercial growth with measurable social impact, using its retail network and customer reach to support women's economic empowerment while making sustainable and socially responsible products more accessible to consumers.

More broadly, long-term partnerships with non-governmental organisations give the company delivery capability in areas such as afforestation, animal welfare and cooperative development, where it does not hold internal expertise. Working with cooperative producers also provides access to differentiated products that competitors cannot necessarily list on the same terms, strengthening both the range and the wider partner ecosystem.

Employee volunteering supports engagement and retention, while the distributed governance model, with unit champions across Planet, People and Product, embeds sustainability capability across human resources, procurement, marketing and store operations rather than concentrating it within a single team. Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate that the programme generates measurable commercial value not only through the growing scale and performance of Watsons Türkiye's sustainable product offering, but also through stronger customer relationships, differentiated supplier partnerships, employee engagement and the company's ability to convert its retail reach into both commercial and social impact.

Costs

The main structural cost is the decision to sell cooperative products without a profit margin. Shelf space, listings, logistics and online merchandising are consumed exactly as they would be for a commercial range, but the gross margin normally earned on that space is forgone, so the cost appears as opportunity cost rather than as a budget line.

Afforestation activity is funded through the partnerships, and the platform requires continuous funding rather than one-off donations if the multi-year targets are to hold.

Employee volunteering consumes working time, and the coordination load falls on the sustainability and corporate communications teams, who run the platform across six projects and several partners simultaneously.

Measurement is itself a cost: project-level indicators, partner data, sales data, store data and customer research all have to be collected and reconciled each period.

Costs are contained by using existing retail infrastructure rather than building parallel channels, and by placing delivery capability with partner organisations instead of hiring it internally.

Impact beyond sustainability and business

Co-benefits

Women's economic empowerment is the clearest co-benefit: four cooperatives and approximately 1,000 women gain access to a national retail channel that would otherwise be closed to producers of their scale.

The partner organisations gain reach. A foundation working on afforestation or animal welfare can address a customer base of a size no non-governmental organisation could reach through its own channels.

Employees gain a structured route into field activity, and the model itself is transferable: any customer-facing sector can use the same mechanics of visible ranges, partner delivery and multi-source measurement.

Potential side-effects

Breadth is the main trade-off. Six projects across environmental, social and animal welfare themes spread management attention widely, and the risk is that each strand is delivered adequately rather than any one of them deeply. The unit champion structure is the control on that risk.

Behaviour data is self-reported through customer research. Reported reductions in single-use plastic and paper consumption are what customers say they do, and they need cross-checking against sales data before they are treated as an environmental result.

Sapling numbers are reported as a measurable programme output. While survival rate and established area would provide additional indicators of long-term ecological impact, the number of saplings planted is reported as a tangible outcome of the afforestation programme, without presenting it as a quantified carbon sequestration figure.

The no-margin model limits how far the cooperative strand can scale. It works because the retailer absorbs the margin, which means growth is bounded by what the business is willing to forgo rather than by producer capacity.

Typical business profile

The model suits consumer-facing retailers that operate a physical store network alongside digital sales channels, where the company controls both the shelf and the communication with the customer.

It is most relevant for health and beauty, personal care and fast-moving consumer goods chains whose category mix already contains lower-impact alternatives, so that the intervention is about visibility and participation rather than about creating new products.

A sustainability governance structure with senior sponsorship is a precondition, because the programme requires human resources, procurement, marketing and store operations to act together on a shared plan rather than on separate departmental targets.

Approach

1. Define the impact areas before selecting projects: Set a small number of impact domains — in this case Planet, People and Product — and require every project to sit inside one of them, so that activity is grouped for measurement rather than accumulated as unrelated initiatives.

2. Place governance above the sustainability team: Run the programme through a Sustainability Management Committee operating under the General Manager and the management team, and appoint a unit champion for each impact area so that delivery responsibility sits inside the operating functions.

3. Select partners for capability, not for visibility: Choose non-governmental organisations that already hold the field expertise the retailer lacks — afforestation, cooperative development, animal welfare — and structure each relationship as a multi-year partnership with its own targets rather than as a donation.

4. Give small producers a commercial route, not a charity slot: List cooperative products in stores and digital channels under the same operational standards as commercial ranges, and sell them without a profit margin so that the value created stays with the producers.

5. Make the lower-impact option visible at the point of decision: Group sustainable living products into dedicated aisles and support them with in-store communication, so that the customer choice is available rather than merely stocked.

6. Open a participation route for employees: Build volunteering into the field projects so that staff contribute to delivery directly, which both supports the projects and keeps internal knowledge of them current.

7. Measure through several independent channels: Combine project performance indicators, data from partner organisations, sales data, store data and customer research, so that behavioural claims can be cross-checked against transactions rather than resting on survey responses alone.

8. Publish a long-term target and report progress against it: Set a dated public target — here 1 million saplings by 2030 — and report the running total each period, which converts a programme into a commitment that stakeholders can audit.

Stakeholders involved

• Project leads: The sustainability and corporate communications teams lead coordination. Strategic direction is set by a Sustainability Management Committee operating under the General Manager and the management team, which reviews priorities and development areas against the company's sustainability targets.

• Unit champions appointed for the Planet, People and Product impact areas carry the programme into the operating functions, which is what keeps delivery from concentrating in a single department.

• Company functions: Human resources, procurement, marketing, store operations and the related business units take active roles in delivery. Procurement and store operations handle the listing and merchandising of cooperative and sustainable ranges, marketing handles the customer-facing communication and the aisle concept, and human resources runs the volunteering route.

• Performance is tracked regularly across the functions and managed through a continuous improvement cycle.

• Main providers: Delivery capability is provided by long-term partnerships with non-governmental organisations: the TEMA Foundation for afforestation and forest protection, KEDV for the women's cooperative programme, and HAÇİKO for animal welfare.

• The four women's cooperatives act as producers, supplying goods into the retail channel, and conventional suppliers and business partners support the sustainable product ranges through their own practices.

• Other: Customers participate through purchasing choices and through the research programme that measures behaviour change; employees participate through volunteering.

• Public bodies, academic institutions, local administrations and local communities are engaged as stakeholders of the wider programme.

• Stakeholder needs are tracked through regular communication mechanisms, partnership meetings, project reviews and customer feedback, and the scope and delivery methods of the projects are adjusted on the basis of that feedback.

Key parameters to consider

The programme has run since 2019 and is managed as a continuing platform rather than as a project with an end date, which is what allows multi-year targets such as the 2030 sapling commitment to be meaningful.

Results accumulate at different speeds by strand. Cooperative sales and customer behaviour respond within a reporting period; afforestation outcomes only become visible over several years.

Scale depends on the size of the customer base rather than on the size of the sustainability budget, which is why a national retail chain can reach 150 million people through communications and participation activity in a single year.

The no-margin cooperative model requires a commercial decision at management level, because it sets aside the normal margin expectation for a defined part of the range.

Implementation and operations tips

Measuring behaviour, not reach, is what separates this model from a communications campaign. Reach figures are easy to generate; the results that matter here are the proportions of customers who noticed the range, changed what they buy and reduced single-use consumption.

Using several data sources at once is the practical safeguard. Partner data, sales data, store data and customer research each answer a different question, and a claim supported by only one of them is weak.

Selling producer goods without a margin removes the accusation that the social strand is a sourcing strategy, but it must be a deliberate management decision with a defined boundary, otherwise it will be reopened at every budget cycle.

Appointing champions inside the business functions is what keeps a cross-functional programme alive between reporting cycles, because it places the work with the people who control shelf space, recruitment and communications budgets.