The UK's largest retailer is installing new technologies, redesigning store layouts and scrapping multi-buy offers in a bid to tackle food waste across its value chain
Six months after making reducing food waste one of its three headline corporate social responsibility goals, Tesco has revealed that between 1 January and 31 June 28,500 tonnes of food was wasted across its operations – equivalent to 0.87% of the total amount of food it sold.
The figure comes in a new report detailing how the retailer is working to reduce the amount of food being wasted across its supply chain and by consumers.
Tesco has worked with Wrap to examine 25 of its bestselling food products, including bananas, bakery items and bagged salad, and calculate the amount of produce wasted in the supply chain, in store and by consumers.
The research reveals that 68% of all the salad grown to be sold bagged in Tesco is wasted; 17% lost in the field, 15% in being processed and 35% when consumers throw it out uneaten.
Meanwhile, 40% of apples (11% in the field and 27% by consumers) and just under half of all bakery items are wasted (17% in production, 4% in store and 25% by consumers).
To cut such waste Tesco has redesigned 600 in-store bakeries to display less bread and is creating a new IT system to enable better planning for daily production and more accurate stock ordering.
The firm has invested in a new temperature control system to ensure optimum conditions for transporting stock such as bananas, as well as better packaging and display designs and staff training, to prevent produce being spoiled.
Tesco also plans to remove “display until” labels from fresh fruit and vegetables and will no longer offer buy-one-get-one-free offers on large bags of salad, with the aim of cutting the amount of fresh produce being thrown away by consumers.
Matt Simister, Tesco’s commercial director of group food, said “We’ve all got a responsibility to tackle food waste and there is no quick-fix single solution. Ending multi-buy promotions on large packs of bagged salads is one way we can help, but this is just the start and we’ll be reviewing what else we can do to our processes and in store.”
Tesco’s chief executive, Philip Clarke, said the firm’s pledge to “lead in reducing food waste” was about trying to reduce waste at all stages of the supply chain “from farm to fork”.
“We are the world’s third largest retailer, so clearly we have a responsibility to minimise the food wasted in our stores. However, we sit at the heart of the value chain and this gives us a crucial vantage point and a shared responsibility to act far beyond the doors of our stores,” he said.
“Over the last six months, my team of experts have put together food waste footprints from the farmer’s field to the customer’s bin. We’ve worked with a range of suppliers and experts across the globe, including Wrap. The output is really simple, but it gives great steer on where to act.”
In its report, Using scale for good, the retailer also outlined recent progress against in its broader sustainability goals, including how it has cut packaging material use for its own-brand energy drinks by 12%.
