Tesco is a significant international retailer. As a global business, the company perceives itself as having an important role to play in helping to minimize its environmental impacts.

Although based in the United Kingdom, Tesco PLC has developed into an international grocery and general merchandising chain, employing 440,000 staff worldwide and with sales exceeding £59 billion (in the year ending February 2009). Operating income exceeded £3 billion. These figures make Tesco the largest British retailer in terms of both total sales and domestic market share, and the third largest in the world after Wal-Mart (United States) and Carrefour (France). It is claimed that £1 in every £7 of UK retail sales goes the way of Tesco.