Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis has encouraged business to do more to tackle food waste, as he revealed that the UK retailer wasted the equivalent of 119 million meals last year.
In a keynote speech at the Global Summit of the Consumer Goods Forum in Cape Town, Lewis revealed that the retailer's waste rose by 4 per cent in the year ending April 2016, and appealed for action across the food industry.
He urged collaboration in tackling food waste right across the supply chain – in farms, distribution, in supermarket operations, and in customer’s own homes.
“When I arrived at Tesco we were the only UK retail company to publish our food waste data," said Lewis.
“What the data shows is that it’s clear where we need to focus our efforts...nearly three years after we announced it, we are still the only UK retailer publishing our data.”
Among the measures Lewis called on to be taken were:
• Cutting time out of the supply chain to provide customers with fresher produce
• Publishing data on food waste to identify hotspots and tackle problems
• Redistributing edible food to people in need
• Introducing simpler to understand date coding, and ending ‘buy one, get one free’ offers on fruit and vegetables
• Widening specifications to take much more of the crop, maximising the amount of fresh produce retailers can sell
In its waste report, Tesco defines waste as any product that isn't used to feed humans. Some 17,800 tonnes of bakery food were sent to animal feed and other waste was sent for anaerobic digestion, where it is turned into energy.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by John Golden. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
