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However, Specsavers believes it has found a model that can scale. The optical retailer has expanded its recycling scheme to all UK stores, adding around 300 locations to an initiative first introduced in 2022.

The move means customers can now drop off unwanted glasses, cases, cleaning cloths, contact lenses and contact lens packaging at every Specsavers branch, regardless of where the products were originally purchased.

In 2025, the scheme collected and recycled 72 tonnes of material from 659 stores and laboratories, almost five tonnes more than the previous year.

For Specsavers’ head of sustainability for the UK and Ireland Helen Curran, the scheme grew out of a gap in the market rather than a regulatory requirement.

“Products like glasses and contact lenses do not really fit into standard recycling schemes,” she said. While donation schemes for reusable spectacles have existed for years, there was no straightforward route for glasses, cases, cloths, contact lenses and blister packs to be handled together.

“We saw an opportunity to make it easier for customers and operationally easier for ourselves.”

Turning optical waste into raw materials

One question facing many retailer recycling schemes is what actually happens to the waste once it disappears into a collection box.

Specsavers’ programme is run with recycling specialist MYGroup, which separates and processes the material at its UK operation in Hull. According to Curran, the scheme captures a broad mix of products, from old spectacles and cases to contact lens packaging and worn lenses.

The retailer operates two collection streams: customer-facing recycling boxes in stores and separate collection points within its laboratories. The lab stream is designed to capture higher-value materials such as dummy lenses used in the manufacturing process.

Specsavers does not currently separate its reporting between customer returns and internally generated waste, nor does it break down the 72 tonnes by material type. Likewise, the company was unable to provide a figure for what proportion of its total UK waste footprint the scheme represents.

What it can say is that much of this material would previously have entered general waste streams.

“If a company was using a different partner that only took glasses and reused them in a developing country, you would only really use around 20 to 30 per cent of those frames,” Curran said. Cases, cloths, contact lenses and blister packs would typically have been discarded through conventional waste routes.

The collected material is ground down and repurposed into products including joinery boards and furniture. While the recycled content is not currently being incorporated back into Specsavers products, the company has worked with MYGroup to produce Specsavers-branded pens made from material recovered through the scheme.

“It is important for people to be able to say, ‘Wait, waste made this?'” Curran said.

The commercial case for sustainability

While sustainability projects are often presented as purely environmental initiatives, Curran argues that waste reduction and commercial efficiency increasingly go hand in hand.

“If we look at general waste for a commercial business, it costs more to have more general waste bins,” she said. “Recycling costs less.”

That thinking appears to be informing a wider sustainability programme across the business. Earlier this year, Specsavers won Retail Week’s Green Initiative of the Year award for changes to its ophthalmic lens manufacturing process. The project reduced hard-to-recycle plastic waste by 107 tonnes a year and cut annual carbon emissions by 230 tonnes through changes to lens production and stock management.

The retailer is also pursuing broader environmental targets. According to its sustainability commitments, Specsavers is targeting net-zero emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2050, with interim goals to reduce operational emissions by 50% and supply-chain emissions by 25% by 2030.

Curran said the company is increasingly focused on reducing waste before it is created, particularly through packaging changes and material efficiency.

“This programme is just one area where we are looking to reduce waste overall, both by improving our recycling rates and looking at waste at source.”

The growing regulatory burden is also shaping decision-making. With measures such as digital product passports and wider sustainability reporting requirements moving up the agenda across Europe, Curran said the priority is understanding what data businesses need and ensuring suppliers are part of the process.

“Any big business will have the majority of its emissions sitting in scope three,” she said. “It is about working with suppliers.”

For Specsavers, the challenge appears less about persuading customers to participate than making participation simple. The company says customer feedback has been positive, although it has not published formal participation figures.

“I think everybody wants to do the right thing,” Curran said. “You just have to make it easy and accessible for them.”

As retailers face growing scrutiny over waste, packaging and supply-chain transparency, Specsavers shows the test lies in whether businesses can make these initiatives easy enough to become routine.

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According to Rithum’s retail director EMEA Mark Howell, the model is becoming an increasingly important part of modern retail strategy, allowing businesses to widen their assortment while saving on cash and warehouse capacity.

Retail Gazette caught up with Howell, who says the fundamental attraction of dropshipping is simple: retailers only pay for stock once it has been shipped by a supplier.

“The virtue and advantage of doing a model like dropship is you only pay for it when it’s shipped by the brand,” he explains.

For retailers faced with constraints such as warehouse capacity, store space and inventory budgets, dropshipping allows them to still provide for customers without ‘committing significant capital upfront’.

“Retailers want to solve a problem,” Howell says. “They want to be relevant for customers. They want to have choice and assortment.”

The approach has become particularly attractive as retailers seek to compete with ecommerce giants such as Amazon, where a significant proportion of products are supplied and fulfilled by third-party sellers operating from warehouses Amazon itself does not own.

“Mimicry is the highest form of flattery,” Howell says. “If it works, why aren’t I doing it?”

What does dropshipping actually change?

While dropshipping is often discussed as a commercial strategy, Howell argues the biggest shift happens operationally.

Instead of goods moving through a retailer’s own distribution network, suppliers become responsible for fulfilment and delivery. The retailer, however, remains accountable for customer experience.

“The physical movement of the goods is managed by a supplier,” he says. However, what does not change are customer expectations.

“Is it being delivered on time? Is the experience good for customers? Is it packaged well? Is it turning up in one piece? All of those things are still true.”

This, Howell says, creates one of the biggest challenges for retailers adopting the model: learning how to relinquish some control without losing visibility.

Many businesses, Howell says, still operate around wholesale processes built over decades. Buyers and merchandisers remain accustomed to approving every SKU, product description and item before it reaches customers.

One of the common mistakes is attempting to replicate those same wholesale processes within a dropship environment.

“If you try and replicate your wholesale processes just into dropship, then you will suffer. You will fail because you’ll still be slow.”

Instead, retailers need to adopt a “trial and learn” mindset, using supplier inventory to test new products and categories before making larger commitments.

The model can also help retailers free up warehouse capacity by moving slower-selling lines out of their own fulfilment networks while continuing to offer them online.

Trust and data become the new battlegrounds

Howell believes that as retailers move away from inventory-led expansion, trust becomes the defining competitive advantage.

“We shop with retailers that we get a good experience with,” he says. For that reason, supplier performance cannot be left to chance.

Retailers typically establish strict operational playbooks, service-level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) for participating suppliers. Failure to meet those standards can result in financial penalties or removal from the programme.

“If you don’t do what customers expect, you’ll erode trust,” Howell says. He points to Marks & Spencer as an example of a retailer that established clear expectations from the outset when building its programme.

Alongside trust, product data is becoming increasingly important as consumers change how they discover products online.

Howell says retailers are now navigating a world where search is becoming more conversational, driven by platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI-powered tools.

“It’s not just enough to say it’s a laptop with 16GB of memory and a certain screen size,” he explains.

If consumers search for a lightweight laptop with a high-quality display, or a breathable hiking backpack suitable for long walks, retailers need product attributes that reflect those needs.

“If that information isn’t there, the AI engine isn’t going to find it.” The challenge is compounded by the fact that many retailers are still working to improve the quality of legacy product data already sitting across their websites.

Learning from past failures

While dropshipping and marketplace models have become commonplace in the US, Howell believes the UK market has historically struggled to achieve the same level of success.

Part of the reason, he argues, is that many retailers attempted to bolt dropship programmes onto existing wholesale systems rather than redesigning processes around the new model.

“UK retailers were trying to make these quite big ideas work, but they were still being bound to the legacy of old wholesale processes.”

By contrast, retailers that have succeeded have invested in new fulfilment models while remaining realistic about the limitations of older technology infrastructure.

“It’s about finding the best path with what you have,” Howell says. The growing maturity of the sector is also helping. More retailers have now seen successful examples in the market, while specialist technology providers and industry professionals bring greater experience than was available a decade ago.

Howell points to Next as an example of a retailer that has successfully modernised its fulfilment approach. While the retailer still has deep roots in traditional wholesale operations, it has developed new fulfilment models and moved beyond some of the limitations of legacy processes.

He also highlights Marks & Spencer’s approach, praising the retailer for having a clear vision of what it wanted its dropship programme to achieve and for setting clear expectations for suppliers from the outset.

Howell says retailers such as M&S, Adidas and Pets at Home may use different commercial models and operate in different sectors, but all face the same challenge of balancing customer experience, supplier relationships and operational efficiency as they expand their assortments beyond inventory held in their own warehouses.
At the same time, retailers are facing new pressures ranging from rising fuel costs and geopolitical disruption to changing regulation around artificial intelligence.

Howell highlights the forthcoming requirements under the EU AI Act, which will introduce new transparency obligations around AI-generated content and product information.

He also points to the future development of Digital Product Passports, which are expected to require significantly greater product-level data and traceability across supply chains.

While the final shape of those regulations is still evolving, Howell believes retailers will increasingly require suppliers to provide the necessary information as a condition of participation.

“The retailer is still heavily liable due to our laws and legislation in the UK.”

For retailers balancing growth ambitions with mounting operational complexity, the challenge is no longer simply expanding assortment. It is doing so while maintaining trust, visibility and compliance.

As customer discovery shifts towards AI-driven search and product recommendations, retailers may find that the quality of their product data matters just as much as the size of their catalogue.

The retailers that succeed will not necessarily be those holding the most stock, but those that can connect customers to the right products, at the right time, through the right fulfilment model.

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The convergence of AI and IoT presents the opportunity to significantly impact the dynamics of operational costs. For food retailers, energy is not a peripheral expense. It is foundational to how stores operate and serve communities. Lighting, HVAC systems, and refrigeration units are essential to trading safely and profitably. So, when energy prices increase, the impact is both immediate and impossible to ignore.

The energy price rises add growing pressure on already razor-thin margins for retailers, and The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has identified rising energy costs as a leading cause behind increasing food prices. Fresh food products – those reliant on refrigeration, such as meat, fish, and produce – have experienced the highest inflation, with prices rising 3.4% year-on-year. This highlights how vulnerable fresh food supply chains are to energy volatility. 

Passing costs directly to consumers is not a sustainable solution, particularly amid continued cost-of-living pressures. Retailers have both a commercial imperative and a social responsibility to protect value for customers while safeguarding their own profitability. Therefore, the real opportunity lies not in incremental cost control, but in fundamentally rethinking how energy and operational performance are managed.
This is where AI and IoT move from optional innovation to strategic necessity. 

By harnessing connected assets and intelligent analytics, retailers can move beyond static energy management and reactive maintenance towards continuous, real-time optimisation. IoT-enabled systems generate vast streams of operational insight. When combined with advanced AI, that data becomes a powerful decision-making engine, enabling retailers to anticipate risk, eliminate inefficiency and actively optimise performance. 

The strategic question is no longer whether retailers collect data, but how effectively they use it. Unlocking the full computational power of technology is what turns operational data into measurable commercial impact. 

Harnessing the power of AI 
The computational potential of AI to process vastamounts of data and consistently diagnose performance creates significant opportunities for retailers to transform operational effectiveness, particularly in energy-intensive environments such as food retail. 

By gaining an overarching view of IoT-connected equipment performance, potential degradation and exposure to changing environmental pressures, AI-driven models can be applied to predict and prevent equipment problems and failures. Crucially, performance degradation does not only increase the risk of failure. It also leads to excess energy consumption as struggling machines work harder to maintain required outputs. Identifying these inefficiencies early ensures that equipment operates at optimal performance, preventing unnecessary energy waste before it compounds into higher operating costs. 

Predictive insight therefore reduces not only the likelihood of breakdowns, but also the hidden energy drain caused by underperforming assets. Engineers can be deployed with a complete picture of a machines condition and history, improving first-time fix rates and minimising the period during which equipment operates inefficiently.
AI’s power also enables more dynamic energy management across IoT assets. Rather than operating on static schedules or manual oversight, AI can evaluate equipment performance within the broader operational context in real-time. By continuously monitoring energy usage patterns and operational requirements, systems can, for example, intelligently optimise refrigeration performance – aligning energy consumption with actual demand while maintaining food safety and compliance. 

Managing operational costs for profitability and resilience  

As energy pressures are likely to persist, the ability to optimise operations through technology will differentiate those retailers who thrive from those who struggle this year. Leveraging AI and IoT will enable food retailers to mitigate the impact of rising energy costs, unlock operational efficiencies and protect margin profits.
Adopting AI-enabled, data-driven approaches isn’t just a competitive advantage, it’s essential for long-term profitability and resilience.  

The message for retailers is clear. The partnership between AI and IoT holds the key to safeguarding, and even improving, profit margins and increasing operational performance this year. Smart, data-driven solutions are now a foundational part of a modern food retail strategy. 

Energy volatility is not going away. Retailers who act now will be best positioned to protect profitability and build resilience.

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Speaking at the business group’s event at London’s QE2 Conference Centre, Mather said that despite ongoing economic uncertainty, “logistics keeps delivering for the UK”.

He described the sector’s workers as “the unsung heroes that will keep Britain moving” and said government understood the role logistics plays in driving growth across the wider economy.

“The logistics industry remains the cornerstone of our island nation which keeps goods moving and businesses trading,” he said.

“The work of Logistics UK is indispensable to the economy, ensuring that we make decisions in government with our eyes wide open and helping us to focus on the issues that matter the most, whether that be resilience, growth or investment.”

Mather said the government heard the voice of Logistics UK “loud and clear”.

He was joined at the conference by shadow secretary of state for business and trade Andrew Griffith MP and Chris McDonald MP, minister for industry at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

McDonald also highlighted the resilience of the sector, noting that supply chains often go unnoticed when they are functioning well.

“When supply chains work, they don’t make the news, and the government recognises the importance of the sector and the efforts it makes to ensure that the economy works,” he said.

“Global instability, including the events in the Middle East, has created huge challenges, but I am really struck by the fact that despite that uncertainty, time and again, logistics continues to deliver for people across the United Kingdom.”

More than 400 executive members registered for Logistics UK’s annual conference, which brings together leaders from across road, rail, water and air, as well as businesses that rely on freight services, including retailers and manufacturers.

Logistics UK chief executive Ben Fletcher said: “Logistics is the engine room of the UK economy, underpinning all other sectors and keeping goods flowing, amid challenging economic conditions.

“The sector doesn’t operate in isolation and drives growth across the economy by linking business regions and markets.

“Continued partnership between industry and government is key to delivering this growth and having three leading political voices at our Annual Conference is testament to the recognition logistics is receiving.

“We look forward to continuing to engage with government to elevate the perceptions of logistics across all parties.”

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The company will now give shoppers the option to claim up to 50 per cent of the original purchase price back in cash, depending on the condition of the tent when it is returned.

The scheme previously allowed customers to buy a Decathlon tent before a festival, use it across the weekend and return it to a participating store in exchange for the value back as a gift card.

The offer will run until 6 September, with returned tents in good condition assessed, cleaned and resold through Decathlon’s Second Life programme.

Decathlon launched the initiative to tackle the growing problem of festivalgoers treating tents as single-use items and leaving them behind to end up in landfill.

Decathlon UK sustainability leader Chris Allen said: “Our No Tent Left Behind scheme goes from strength to strength each year.

“What started as a small-scale initiative has become an important part of how we approach camping and festivals more broadly, encouraging customers to return used equipment, keep valuable materials in circulation, and give more products a second chapter through our Second Life programme.

“This year, we’re helping customers’ pockets as well as our planet. With our new one-hour bank transfer service, we’re providing the flexibility and value needed to turn unused gear into new adventures.”

The campaign is being backed by radio broadcaster Edith Bowman, whose work includes covering Glastonbury.

Bowman said: “From festival fields to family camping trips, great gear should be used and enjoyed again and again.

“Decathlon’s Tent Pledge makes it easy for people to pass tents on, give them a second life, and help keep the spirit of adventure going long after the weekend ends.”

Decathlon is continuing to build out its circular retail offer across multiple categories.

Earlier this year, the retailer expanded its BuyBack service by allowing customers to trade in unwanted or outgrown bikes for instant money back for the first time.

Customers can bring bikes from any brand into a UK Decathlon store, where staff assess the condition and offer a quote. The retailer has also launched an online quick quote tool, giving shoppers an estimated value before completing the full trade-in process.

For 2026, Decathlon has introduced a one-hour bank transfer payment option across BuyBack, giving customers cash for their unwanted gear. Shoppers can also choose a gift card to spend in store or online.

The BuyBack scheme, which launched in 2023, now covers products across up to 15 sports, including fitness equipment, racquet sports, golf, horse riding, GPS watches, camping gear, kayaks and paddleboards.

More than 10,000 items have been returned since the scheme launched, with Decathlon refurbishing products before reselling them through its Second Life range at a reduced price.

Allen previously said the service was designed to help customers’ “pockets as well as our planet”, while making it easier to turn unused sports equipment into “new adventures”.

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The supermarket said white eggs have a 12.7 per cent lower carbon footprint than brown alternatives, as the hens that lay them are typically smaller and eat less feed.

Sainsbury’s said this helps to “indirectly reduce demand on land and water used to grow feed crops, as well as the amount of manure produced”.

The retailer added that the move would also support animal welfare, with white-egg-laying hens said to be less prone to feather pecking.

Sainsbury’s, which has committed to reaching net zero across its own operations by 2035 and across its suppliers by 2050, said it was “making progress” on the switch in its latest annual report.

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “White eggs have the same delicious taste and nutritional benefits as their brown counterparts, but result in lower emissions and better welfare outcomes for the hens that lay them.

“We know Brits love their eggs and, as we work with suppliers to transition all our own brand to white shells, they can now enjoy them knowing they are better for the environment and the hens.”

The move marks a return to a format more common on UK supermarket shelves in the 1970s, before brown eggs became dominant as shoppers increasingly associated them with being healthier or more natural.

White eggs are far more common in the US, where they account for around three quarters of eggs consumed, but have historically been used more widely by restaurants in the UK than sold directly to shoppers.

However, Sainsbury’s could face challenges in ramping up supply, with white-egg-laying hens currently making up just 15 per cent of the national flock, according to the British Egg Industry Council.

The egg switch is the latest packaging and product change introduced by the grocer as part of its sustainability push.

In 2023, Sainsbury’s began vacuum-packing its minced beef instead of using plastic trays, a move it said would reduce plastic use, despite some shoppers criticising the new packs.

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Following consultation with industry stakeholders, manual return points will receive a handling fee of 3p per container returned.

For automated return points using reverse vending machines (RVMs), a tiered payment structure has been agreed. Operators will receive 5p per container for up to 225,000 eligible containers returned annually, with returns above that threshold attracting a fee of 1.3p per container.

EcoVend, part of Reconomy, managing director Tarvis Way said the confirmation represented an important milestone for businesses preparing for DRS.

“For retailers, having greater clarity on the financial framework now will help support investment decisions and operational planning ahead of the scheme’s launch in 2027,” Way said.

“It is encouraging to see a tiered approach that recognises the different realities facing retailers of varying sizes and return volumes.

“Reflecting the distinction between manual return points and reverse vending machine operators should help ensure the scheme remains practical and accessible across a diverse retail landscape.

“The commitment to review fees before launch and on an ongoing basis will also be important.

Way added: “As businesses gain experience of operating within the scheme, it is vital that the fee structure continues to reflect real-world costs and supports high levels of participation, helping to deliver the strong return rates needed to create a more circular economy.”

The announcement comes as the latest update to the scheme, scheduled to launch across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland in October 2027, with retailers and operators continuing preparations for its rollout.

In April, Exchange for Change confirmed that a flat 20p deposit will apply to all in-scope drinks containers, after research conducted by the not-for-profit scheme administrator found deposit levels below 15p were unlikely to provide a strong enough incentive to meet the target of returning 90% of containers within three years

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The judicial review was brought by the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers and the British Meat Processors Association, which challenged the basis on which the regulator calculates and recovers charges for food hygiene and safety controls.

Presiding over the case, Mrs Justice Dias found that the FSA had been levying charges unlawfully.

The agency accepted that the court must quash the hourly rates applied to official controls and enforcement activities, as well as the supporting cost data used to calculate those rates.

Industry groups argued that businesses had been required to fund inefficiencies within the inspection system, including costs linked to contractor management arrangements.

It is understood further arguments about the ruling, which focuses on what activities and personnel can lawfully be included within the charges paid by slaughterhouses, will now be heard on the precise terms of the court order.

The case comes against the backdrop of rising regulatory costs for the sector. According to the claimants, annual charges for official controls currently total around £64m, with fees increasing by 24% this year, a sharp rise in an industry operating on low profit margins.

FSA chief executive Katie Pettifer said: “We have carefully considered the court’s judgment in the judicial review brought by AIMS regarding our meat inspection charges. 

“While the ruling does not challenge the principle that we can charge for meat inspection, we are disappointed with its conclusions about how charges are calculated. We acted in good faith in calculating our charge rates and in presenting the information we publish about them and are seeking leave to appeal the judgment.

“While the majority of our charges will not be in dispute, the ruling does create some uncertainty over some elements. We know businesses will want clarity on what this will ultimately mean in practice, and we will provide further information as quickly as the legal process allows.

“Food safety is non-negotiable. Our Official Vets and Meat Hygiene Inspectors carry out essential work every day that protects public health, upholds animal welfare, and underpins the £11.3 billion meat industry. That will not change.”

Among other risks, the industry warned such soaring costs will add to cost of living obstacles, food inflation and the fear it will endanger the viability of many slaughterhouses.

AIMS executive direcor Jason Aldiss said: “The judgment must now mark the beginning of a complete reset in the relationship between the regulator and the meat industry, founded upon legality, proportionality, transparency and scientific risk-based regulation.”

Meanwhile, John Powell, chief executive of BMPA, welcomed the ruling and said it exposed weaknesses in the FSA’s charging policy. He said the association would work with the regulator to establish a fairer and more transparent approach to delivering official controls.

NFU President Tom Bradshaw added: “Today’s ruling is a hugely significant outcome for the livestock sector and is a brilliant result for the meat industry, the NFU and our members. This has been a key issue we’ve consistently raised with government over many months due to the pressure these charges put on abattoirs.”

“The NFU has long‑held the view that these charges on abattoirs risk seriously impacting the wider livestock sector. It has consistently urged government to carry out a full review of the FSA’s charging regime to ensure that charges are fair and equitable and do not disadvantage UK businesses.

“Since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East the NFU has also asked government to postpone these charges and adopt a different approach to help ease cost pressures on livestock farmers.”

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