The end is nigh for the free supermarket plastic carrier bag, but that’s not the only change coming to retailers thanks to the demands of increasingly choosy consumers. Retailers are using buzz-words such as ethical, local, traceable and sustainable to convince shoppers that they are socially and environmentally minded. And that’s good news for jobseekers seeking an ethical career.

Retailers are recruiting staff to “green-up” their businesses, says Jason Elliott, the managing director of Ethical Jobs, a recruitment website. “The compliance area will increase exponentially over the next couple of years as legislation tightens up, particularly [in] the food sector,” he says.

Waitrose has a corporate social responsibility department working to implement initiatives such as packaging reduction. Some of the team have a background in environ-mental consultancy, but the main requirement is a passion for sustainability.

Elsewhere its specialist food buyers are expected to be experts in animal welfare, farming practices and fair trade. Jeremy Langley, the specialist fish buyer, is passionate about fishing, and has his own coarse fishery. “My hobby is my career,” he says.

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BACKGROUND

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Langley travels around the world, from Iceland to the Mal-dives, visiting suppliers to build relationships and to ensure that the fish they stock can be traced to its source. The decisions he takes about what fish makes its way to the shelves is copied by other retailers, he says, and it’s a responsibility that he takes very seriously.

Keen to prove its environmental credentials, Tesco has set up a new department dedicated to sourcing local food. “Local [sourcing] is one of a number of areas changing the way in which we do things,” says Emily Shamma, its head of local sourcing. “Ethical standards go hand in hand with that.”

Shamma leads a team of 21 people, which includes senior buying and technical managers who work in several regional offices. It takes more than experience to get you on the team, she says. You have to have roots in the region that you represent. Regional marketing managers work alongside the buyers to promote the local produce.

Part of the draw of working at the Body Shop is the ethical values that it espouses, says Jan Buckingham, its director of global values. The company employs in-house teams dedicated to corporate social responsibility, ethical trading and its community trade programme, but ethical awareness is written into everyone’s job description, she says.

Issues such as global warming are making new demands on workers and employers. “You need to bring people into the business who can think more laterally and apply their intelligence to... the wider ethical issues of what they are doing. He or she needs to be a broader person than someone who simply has all the technical information at his or her fingertips,” Buckingham says.

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