Health and wellness products retailer Holland & Barrett has announced a partnership with Provenance, a sustainability data platform that helps validate environmental claims.
As of this week, Provenance-validated claims are included on Holland & Barrett’s online channels in the UK and Ireland in a move that it said provides its customers with details to help them make informed purchasing decisions.
From the get go, Provenance claims will feature on the product pages of Holland & Barrett’s own label vitamins and food and sports nutrition ranges, as well as on products from brands such as Weleda, Westlab, Pukka Herbs, Grass & Co, and Faith in Nature.
Provenance’s platform and framework of green claims is in place to help Holland & Barrett and its brands to navigate what is becoming an increasingly complex regulatory landscape surrounding sustainability claims and how they must be evidenced. The UK’s Green Claims Code was established in 2021 to help businesses avoid greenwashing in their marketing messages.
Guy Farmer, commercial trading director at Holland & Barrett, said: “Our customers have always looked to us for natural, ethical, and sustainable products and this initiative reinforces our commitment to sustainability whilst also providing our suppliers with powerful tools to build trust and loyalty with our customers around the claims they are making.
“Brands that validate their claims with Provenance will be well-positioned to stand out, attract eco-conscious consumers, and ultimately help drive more sales through our platform.”
He added: “Our partnership with Provenance is also a vital compliance measure for our business. We require all future suppliers to use Provenance to validate any sustainability claims they wish to make.”
Holland & Barrett has offered its partner brands a sponsored limited membership to Provenance, and Farmer said many of them have already onboarded.
“Over time we believe Provenance will be more than a compliance measure for our suppliers, it will be a strategic growth initiative designed to harness the power of sustainability as a lever for market success, both with Holland & Barrett and as they scale their businesses,” he continued.
Jessi Baker, founder of Provenance, remarked: “By being one of the first high street retailers to integrate our platform, [Holland & Barrett is] setting a powerful example for the retail industry.
“We are excited to help their brands communicate their sustainability journeys in a compliant, customer-friendly way, setting a new benchmark for the retail sector.”
Verified sustainability claims powered by Provenance will arrive at the shelf edge and on in-store materials in 2025.
Read more about Holland & Barrett on Green Retail World
[image credit: Green Retail World]
1 thought on “Communicating sustainability: Holland & Barrett teams up with Provenance”
H&B sustainability claims that its plethora of highly visible displayed coloured plastic containers are ‘suitable for local recycling.’ It is widely known that such items are not easily recycled domestically but are incinerated or exported, if not landfilled.
This is fundamentally unsustainable marketing. If the H&B Board are honest and serious they would improvise a returnable/refillable option or encourage customers to return empty containers for H&B to facilitate recycling or reprocessing with their suppliers and manufacturers in a circular economy.