We got the power

We got the power

At Sainsbury’s, unwanted food isn’t thrown away. It’s made into energy.

ReFood’s anaerobic digestion plant in Widnes

We strive to avoid all waste in our operations, especially when it comes to food.

As such we work closely with suppliers to ensure waste is at a minimum, and we’ve also built up a network of charity partners to help redistribute anything that remains unsold.

While we’re making great strides in reducing this there are still some instances where we end up with unsold food we can’t give away.

To meet our commitment to send zero operational waste to landfill, we send our food waste to be recycled – where it’s turned, among other things, into a renewable green gas.

It happens through a process called anaerobic digestion (AD) and through it we can create enough gas to power the equivalent of 10,000 homes each year.

Two green gas schemes

To help us make the most of food waste, we have two types of green gas projects in operation. In one, we send food waste to a food recycling plant where it’s converted into gas and fertiliser.

This green gas is then exported to the national gas grid, and Sainsbury’s buys back certified carbon-neutral energy from the same plants for use in our stores, for power and heating.

10,000

homes a year could be powered with the green gas created from our anaerobic digestion

In all, the scheme creates enough green gas to offset some 10 per cent of our entire annual gas consumption, meaning we’re running a cleaner, more efficient business by recycling our waste.

In all, the scheme creates gas equivalent to 10 per cent of our entire national gas consumption.

Going off-grid

In a second project, we have a superstore which runs entirely on electricity generated from food waste.

In this scheme, the food from Sainsbury’s – along with other waste suppliers – is sent to a plant near our Cannock store in Staffordshire. There, it’s converted into gas and used to generate electricity on site, which is then supplied directly to the supermarket via a cable.

It means that, for day-to-day electricity consumption, our Cannock superstore is running on rubbish and completely off-grid.

Reducing food waste

Turning food waste into energy is a success – but ironically, it is one of those rare achievements that we’re trying to scale back.

That’s because we’re trying to reduce food waste as much as possible: and in 2015/16 we succeeded, cutting the amount of food waste we convert into energy by 9.4% to 26,910 tonnes.

After all, it’s better not to waste food in the first place than trying to recover energy from it at the end of the chain. But where food can’t be saved, we’re proud to be helping generate green gas.