Tesco sustainability director, Anna Turrell, has announced she is leaving the retailer after a three-year spell.
The former Nestlé head of sustainability has held the group-level Tesco sustainability director role since August 2022 – the first six of which on an interim basis before she took on the job in a permanent capacity earlier this year. She had originally joined the UK’s largest grocer as group head of environment in June 2020.
Turrell officially left Tesco at the end of June and announced her decision to leave Tesco via LinkedIn earlier this week. She said news of her next appointment would come in due course and highlighted what she deemed as key achievements during her tenure at the supermarket chain.
Those key achievements she listed included expanding Tesco’s net zero commitment, catalysing the launch of the UK ‘Soy Manifesto’, launched green bonds for the first time, investing £5 million in the retailer’s Brazilian soy supply chain, and creating a new strategic framework to reduce the business’s environmental impact.
There was much more in between, and Turrell stated: “We were able to do all this because of the incredible people I have worked alongside (both inside and outside of the company and across our supply chains).
“Their passion, commitment, energy and humanity are the reasons we’ve made such amazing progress and will continue to do so into the future. I want to use this moment to profoundly thank everyone of these individuals and organisations.”
She also suggested food system transformation needs “authentic collaboration right across the value chain”, as well as requiring stakeholders to “keep an open mind to emerging ideas, innovations, and solutions”.
Tesco is actively seeking a replacement for the position vacated by Turrell. Bryony Waugh currently sits in Turrell’s former role as head of environment, while the grocer is also in the process of recruiting a lead climate change manager to lead the delivery of the group’s net zero commitments.
In February this year, Turrell – alongside Emily Kunen, senior director for sustainable agriculture at PepsiCo – was elected the new co-chair of the the Consumer Goods Forum’s Forest Positive Coalition of Action.
[Image credit: Green Retail World]
