Schwarz Group's Circularity, ESG & Supply Chain Strength

Schwarz Group's 2025 Sustainability Report outlines how energy sovereignty and circular economy performance are being embedded across its retail, production and recycling operations.

Schwarz Group has used its 2025 Sustainability Report to set out how environmental strategy and circular economy performance are being woven into the structure of its business.

According to Schwarz Group, targeted investment in energy sovereignty and resource protection forms the basis of this approach.

The report covers a retail and production ecosystem that spans around 14,500 stores and 604,000 employees worldwide.

In the 2025 financial year, the group's companies recorded combined sales of €185.6bn (US$200.4bn).

An ecosystem built on circularity

Schwarz Group's operations run from production and retail through to recycling and digitalisation.

Lidl and Kaufland handle food retail across 33 countries, while Schwarz Produktion supplies a large share of the group's own-brand products and sustainable packaging.

This structure could mean that sustainability decisions taken at the production stage carry through the entire chain, from packaging design to end-of-life recycling.

Susanne Marell, Executive Vice President of Schwarz Corporate Affairs, linked this approach to the pressures of the current climate.

"Especially in times of geopolitical volatility, we do not waver from our sustainability targets; instead, we steadily continue on our path," she says.

She added: "Through measures to strengthen our energy and resource sovereignty, as well as a clear commitment to our responsibility as an employer and trainer."

Cutting plastic across the chain

PreZero, the group's recycling arm, works on management solutions intended to support a functioning circular economy.

Plastic reduction has been one of its main initiatives across the value chain.

According to Schwarz Group, own-brand primary plastic packaging saw a 35.9% reduction in plastic use, a 26.1% share of recycled material and a 67.3% recyclability rate.

This plastic strategy, pursued jointly across the group's divisions, concluded at the end of 2025 and has now been succeeded by "REset Resources."

Under this new strategy, targets have been extended to 2030 and widened to cover all packaging materials, not plastic alone.

Operational waste handling also showed a change.

A total of 90.1% of waste was reused, recycled, composted or fermented during the fiscal year.

By 2030, Schwarz Group aims to raise this figure to 95%.

Pure waste incineration, defined under DIN SPEC 91436, has been deliberately excluded from this target, along with waste from the group's own recovery and disposal facilities and construction waste.

Linking sustainability to risk

Schwarz Group frames its environmental performance as part of a wider risk management structure.

According to the company, achieving financial, ecological and social goals in a stable manner depends on this link.

An external environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating, renewed annually, supports this claim.

The company states that this continuous and transparent assessment could reduce potential market and environmental risks over time.

The group's integrated ecosystem of retail, production, digitalisation and recycling is presented as a source of stability during periods of economic difficulty.

This structure sits alongside a workforce of around 604,000 employees.

In the 2025 fiscal year, Schwarz Group created 9,000 new jobs worldwide, of which 5,000 were in Germany.

Solar output and emissions data

Self-generated solar power output grew by 28% in 2025, reaching more than 473,000 megawatt-hours.

According to Schwarz Group, this volume is enough to cover the average annual consumption of more than 136,000 households.

Consolidated operational emissions, covering Scope 1 and Scope 2, fell by 44.1% against the 2019 baseline.

This places the group on a path towards its near-term climate target of a 48% reduction by 2030.

A climate transition plan, published for the first time in this year's report, sets out the levers the group intends to use on its route to net zero by 2050.

According to Schwarz Group, the plan is designed as a strategic tool to help business processes withstand growing climate risks.

Schwarz Group presents renewable energy production as a response to volatile energy markets driven by global uncertainty. Expanding self-generated solar capacity is described as a lever for climate action as well as for energy independence.

The rise in solar output, from a smaller base to more than 473,000 megawatt-hours in 2025, forms part of this dual purpose. The company links this expansion directly to reducing exposure to external energy shocks.

Taken together, these figures form the basis of what Schwarz Group calls its "REset Resources" strategy, extending circular economy targets to all packaging materials across its divisions by 2030.