Date: 2025-08-22 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00006818
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Food waste ... Rivals to follow Tesco in revealing amount of food wasted
Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
Toronto Sustainability Speaker Series 3,451 members
Brad Zarnett Follow Brad Supermarkets commit to publish food waste - a first step Brad Zarnett Founder, Toronto Sustainability Speaker Series (TSSS) Canada's premiere idea exchange for sustainability leadership Top Contributor Rivals to follow Tesco in revealing amount of food wasted theguardian.com Big four supermarkets, plus M&S, Waitrose and Co-op to regularly publish tonnage of food thrown out by stores from... Like (2) Comment (2) Unfollow Reply Privately4 days ago Comments Cesar Gonzalez-Canton, Manuel Garces Martin like this 2 comments Peter Croppo Peter Peter Croppo Business Development at EH Controls Inc. Is it reasonable to assume we see similar waste here in Canada? When you consider the low profit margins of BigCorp Grocers, you'd think they would establish a better MO to help distribute the excess to people in need. Yes, I understand they are reviewing & improving & so on but if they expensed a bit in order to make it possible to donate - wouldn't that, couldn't that be a win-win for Food Banks? Could it possibly be expanded so that the Gov't actually provided tax breaks as an incentive so as to encourage more of the excess going to Food Banks before it becomes waste? Bottom line is how do we induce BigCorp to be better & more efficient providers of food? How do we induce the Gov't to be better & more responsive to the needs of those who can't afford to shop at BigCorp Grocers? The 1% don't need Food Banks while the 99% can't afford BigCorp Groceries. There's got to be a viable way to serve both ends of the consumer spectrum. Where are the BigThinkers??? Cheers... Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 1 day ago
Peter Burgess Peter Burgess Founder/CEO at TrueValueMetrics developing Multi Dimension Impact Accounting Thank you Brad for bringing the matter of food waste into the conversation. I like what Peter has to say, particularly the question 'Where are the big thinkers?'. Sarah Butler's article in the Guardian highlights the stupid amount of waste that has become 'built in' to the modern 'efficient' profitable business model that is a supermarket. I am reminded of my mother in 1948 when I was 8 years old, grumbling because the price of tomatoes at 4 pm in the afternoon was higher than it had been in the morning. My mother made a practice of getting vegetables late in the afternoon when the greengrocer reduced the prices to 'clear out' the inventory so that he could start with a fresh stock next day. The greengrocer explained that on this particular day, the tomatoes were pretty much sold out, and there was no need to reduce the prices. Now this is a 'market'. This price is driven by supply and demand, and is very much what Adam Smith wrote about in his famous book Wealth of Nations. For all practical purposes the modern supermarket operates as a superstore with monopoly power over the pricing. In a Soviet style economy it is the State that sets the prices and the system did not work very well. In the Superstore economy it is corporate bureaucrats that set the prices and it does not work very well either. In a Soviet style economy the lack of product resulted in endemic shortage. In a Western superstore economy there is endemic surplus and waste. With conventional accounting, there is a loss of revenue and write down of the inventory by junking surplus stock, but there are no significant incremental costs associated with the waste. The trucost impact of this waste is however very significant, and should be brought into account. Maybe there are ways for tax rates to be adjusted based on the waste footprint of economic actors in the food sector. In an agile economy, important changes should happen pretty quickly. In the modern economy with huge dinosaur like organizations change takes a long time ... unless, of course it is change that will make the company more profit, and improve the stock price! In developing countries, there is also massive food waste, but the causes are very different and the solutions should be quite different. That is another subject. Peter Burgess - TrueValueMetrics Multi Dimension Impact Accounting Delete Edit Comment 14 minutes left to edit
Rivals to follow Tesco in revealing amount of food wasted
Big four supermarkets, plus M&S, Waitrose and Co-op to regularly publish tonnage of food thrown out by stores from 2015
Food waste
Food waste being composted. Tesco generated 28,500 tonnes of food waste at its stores and distribution centres in the first six months of 2013. Photograph: Alamy The UK's biggest grocers have pledged to disclose the volume of food discarded by their stores in an effort to cut down on the millions of tonnes wasted each year.
Retailers have been under pressure to act after Tesco admitted it generated 28,500 tonnes of food waste at its stores and distribution centres in the first six months of last year alone.
The chain said two-thirds of bagged salad was thrown out, either in-store or by shoppers, and 40% of apples were wasted.
Green campaigners say poor buying and marketing practices contribute to the 15m-tonne pile of food discarded in the UK each year according to the government's waste reduction advisory body, Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap).
In response, the retail industry organisation, the British Retail Consortium (BRC), will announce that the big four supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons as well as Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and the Co-op will release regular updates on the amount of food wasted in their stores. The first data will be published early in 2015.
Green campaigners said however that retailers needed to do more. Vicki Hird, a food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: 'Food waste has been growing over the last few decades because of the way supermarkets have driven consumption. These figures will indicate how over-purchasing and other poor buying practices are occurring, but retailers need to really examine whether their marketing strategies are fit for purpose in today's resource-confined world.'
Andrew Opie, director of food sustainability at the BRC, said he believed the new reporting regime would help drive change as part of a broader effort to make retailers more sustainable.
The industry will also commit to cutting absolute carbon emissions by 25%, based on 2005 levels, by 2020. That compares to a European target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020.
Between 2005 and 2013 retailers have cut total emissions from their stores by just 8% because more outlets have opened, offsetting an average 30% cut in the amount of carbon emitted per store.
However, retailers cut the amount of waste they sent to landfill sites to 6% in 2013 compared with 47% in 2005. They are now committed to sending just 1% of waste to landfill by 2020.
Opie criticised the government's focus on 'marginal waste issues' such as plastic bags, where there are plans to introduce a tax in England in line with systems in place in Wales and Northern Ireland.
'That has been a bit of a distraction from bigger issues on waste,' he said. 'Once the issue around carrier bags is over we can really concentrate on the areas which will make the most difference.'
Opie said it was important to look at the whole life-cycle of products, from production to selling, use and disposal, to help cut down on waste and create a 'circular economy' in which resources could be re-used.