When you see the chief executives of five world-famous companies debating how to make the broader retail sector more sustainable, you realise a quiet revolution is underway.

The senior figures in question were the bosses of Tesco, Coca Cola, Unilever, SC Johnson and Reckitt Benckiser, responsible for combined sales of well in excess of £100 billion. The stage was the Sustainable Consumption Institute event –‘Consumers: the key to a low carbon world’ – held at the Royal Society in London this month.

These leaders acknowledged the major role their companies can play in helping their customers to lead more sustainable lives. They also talked about their responsibility to lead and to educate consumers – quite a change from the “we only do what consumers tell us” rhetoric that we might have heard in the past.

Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive, used the event to announce bold new climate change ambitions for the world’s third largest retailer.

Three commitments particularly caught my eye.

Firstly, Tesco will become a zero carbon business by 2050 (at the latest) – an aspiration that we would encourage others to strive for (obviously the earlier the better).

Secondly, it will reduce the carbon impact of the products in its supply chain by 30% by 2020 – meaning it will have to collaborate much more closely with key suppliers.

And thirdly, the retailer will work with consumers to help them move towards zero carbon homes – a big potential prize.

We have to rewind to early 2007 to see Tesco’s first big announcements on climate change – at the ‘Green Grocer’ event, hosted by Forum for the Future. It was there that Sir Terry first talked about the need for a new revolution in green consumption and pledged to set up the Sustainable Consumption Institute.

It was one of a flurry of bold retailer announcements on sustainability at the time, including Marks & Spencer’s Plan A and Wal-Mart’s Sustainability 360.

Since then many of our leading retailers, including Tesco, have taken some fantastic steps, particularly on climate change. In the grand scheme of things though, it’s been more of a rumble, than the revolution we really need.

Sir Terry reiterated the rationale for a revolution in green consumption at the recent event: “For Tesco [it]… is a fantastic opportunity: once and for all to break the link between consumption and emissions, and in doing so to satisfy a new consumer need, and grow our business.”

Tesco deserves praise for raising the bar, as the need for action is growing ever more urgent. That’s why we’ll be pushing our retail and branded manufacturing partners hard next year on enabling, informing and encouraging consumers to make sustainable purchasing decisions. We need more bold ambitions and – critically - we need to see them realised, in order to achieve a real green retail revolution.