Taking no prisoners on food waste

Taking no prisoners on food waste

We’re taking innovative steps to stamp out food waste – and being open about how far we have to go

“We have been working hard to tackle food waste”

Mike Coupe,
CEO of Sainsbury’s

In 2016 – in our first public statement of our operational food waste levels – we announced that Sainsbury’s operational food waste fell by 9.4 per cent in 2015/16, compared to the previous year.

This is equal to nearly 2,800 tonnes of food that we’d otherwise have converted back into energy via anaerobic digestion.

Building on our 2013 success in becoming the first grocery retailer to send zero operational waste to landfill, we’re tackling food waste in many innovative ways.

9.4%

less food waste in 2015/16, compared to the year before

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

Promotional material showing how Sainsbury’s donates left over fresh food to local charities, showing basket of food with caption ‘Food going further’

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.