Partnering with farmers
Crucially, we’re working more closely with our farmers and growers to help ensure what they grow matches the quantities our customers will buy. We’re also sourcing more directly from them, so we can get products into stores quicker and so give them a longer shelf life. This is particularly important with citrus fruits and salads.
We are also looking for new ways to sell ‘wonky’ fruit and veg – for example, by converting oddly shaped squash into butternut squash noodles, or boodles.
To reduce unsold food, we’re also making more use of technology to manage stock levels, and have redesigned packaging to make it last longer.
Helping communities
And if food is near its sell-by date and likely to go unsold we look to donate it to local charities.
We have more than 1,000 food donation partnerships, and donated nearly two-and-a-half times as much food in 2015/16 as we did the year before. We also try to convert food that isn’t donated into animal feed.
Working with customers
We don’t only aim to reduce our own food waste. We’ve also helped customers to waste less by removing multi-buys from all our food products, so they only buy what they need.
We still have a long way to go. But from farmer to store to customer, we’re doing all we can to stamp out food waste.