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Page added on February 5, 2016
The Truth Behind Waste in Supermarket Supply Chains
I’m standing outside Sainsbury’s HQ, next to two friends dressed as a carrot and strawberry, with a refuse skip full of food waste, mounted on the back of a truck. We’re being told by the police and a security guard that we can’t enter the building to hand in a petition – signed by over 225,000 people – calling on Sainsbury’s and the other major supermarkets to tackle their food waste.
Shockingly, an estimated third of the food grown worldwide is wasted. If food waste was a country, it would have the third largest emissions of carbon after the US and China. The water used to grow food that is wasted every year, could cover the household water needs of 9 billion people – the number expected on the planet by 2050. Some 28% of the world’s agricultural land is used to grow food that ends up as waste – about the same area as China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia combined. According to the FAO, the food wasted globally would be enough to end world hunger many times over.
How can we utilise this abundance of food and resources, which is currently being wasted? A common narrative is that food waste in rich countries is mainly caused by consumers in the home. But there is a whole chunk missing from this picture.
About half of the food wasted in the UK is wasted in the supply chain, before it even gets to the shopping basket – about 7 million tonnes of it. That’s more than enough to end UK food poverty. Many businesses waste more in a day than a consumer wastes in a year. So it’s clear that attempts by supermarkets to focus the debate on consumers and deflect attention from their supply chains is wrong. We need to tackle waste on the UK’s farms and factories as a priority.
This is Rubbish launched the Stop the Rot campaign in order to shed light on the food waste that’s often hidden from consumers’ view, and increase public pressure for change.
While food waste on farms is estimated at a colossal 3 million tonnes, the actual figure is unknown. We started our journey by visiting farms who were at the sharp end of supermarket practices and policies that lead them to waste food they spend months patiently cultivating.
One farmer we visited wasted 300,000 perfectly edible cabbages. The reason for this farm waste is varied. Sometimes produce is rejected because it’s the wrong shape or size and doesn’t adhere to rigorous cosmetic standards set by supermarkets. It’s fairly common practice for supermarkets to cancel orders at the last minute, yet farmers overproduce for fear of being delisted if they can’t fulfil a single order. Both lead to massive waste and many farmers have been driven out of business by these practices. They need to stop.
Consumers buy 75% of the UK’s food through the big four supermarkets: Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s. These companies have a huge amount of power over their suppliers’ food waste.
In recent years, there’s been some progress, with expanded redistribution of food waste to charity, and a relaxation of cosmetic standards for some product ranges, as well as forays into whole crop purchasing. But these changes have had only a marginal effect because the problem is so large. For instance, only 2% of the UK’s edible food waste is currently redistributed. What’s called for are solid reduction targets rather than piecemeal initiatives which are good for PR but don’t tackle the core problem.
Courtauld is a voluntary agreement to cut food waste in the UK over the next 10 years. The industry is on the cusp of agreeing its next phase. We need pressure on the food industry to step up to ambitious targets of at least a 30% reduction in supply chain food waste. However, if voluntary measures fail to achieve their planned objectives, then regulation is clearly needed.
Stop the Rot is calling for supermarkets to publish data on their whole supply chain waste, including farms. Furthermore, we are calling on them to commit to the 30% reduction in supply chain waste over the next ten years.
We’ve built a huge movement of supporters along the way, amongst others they include Friends of the Earth, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Rosie Boycott, and Caroline Lucas MP, not to mention our 225,000 petition signees.
In addition to our petition, we’ve projected our campaign calls onto supermarket buildings, and have been talking to supermarkets, MPs, and civil society groups to tackle supply chain food waste. We have already won meetings with Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s (despite the frosty reception on our initial visit), and progress is being made. But the supermarkets still haven’t committed to making the changes we have asked for. We need to increase the pressure on them and show that their customers, and the wider public, want action.
To get behind the Stop the Rot campaign, please sign our petition.
Stop the Rot are supporters of Shadow DEFRA Minister Kerry McCarthy’s Food Waste Bill, which is due for its second reading on 29th January. If successful, it will legally obligate businesses to reduce their food waste by 30% by 2025.
Use up your leftovers and deploy your compost caddy, yes. But next time you do so, remember the 300,000 cabbages one farmer had to waste, and see that we need to reduce waste through the entirety of the food chain. We need political change, so join our movement to Stop the Rot!
18 Comments on "The Truth Behind Waste in Supermarket Supply Chains"
Lawfish1964 on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:33 am
Or you could just buy all your produce locally and seasonally.
pinkdotR on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:39 am
On one hand it is very sad.
On the other hand it gives us some hope as
this and other kinds of waste are our biggest reserves of oil and other resources once the “regular” ones get depleted. They can buy us some time needed for transition.
Davy on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 8:07 am
Food waste is a product of our just-in-time food chain. It is a product of consumer choice. It is a product of consumer apathy and sloth. It is a product of modern man’s gluttony. Our just-in-time food chain requires food be produced and shipped long distances. Expensive processing and preparations are more unneeded inputs never discussed.
Our lives revolve around our lives and not around food like it used to be. People have too many choices. Food is pitched because they no longer have a taste for what was opened or made. Many leftovers in times past would be made into a new dish. Meats would be used later as soups for example. Horribly nasty food products at all levels like soda’s are opened and only partially consumed. At restaurants servings are excessive and often a source of waste. How about all that fast food packaging pitched after an unhealthy fast food meal? We eat far too much for good health. Our gluttony then is manifested in huge health care costs. We eats so many foods that could be produced locally but are not because the food industry has made these sources unprofitable. We should be eating less, local, seasonally, with as much of the product utilized as practical. Even our waste should be fed to pigs or composted.
This unsustainable food culture is something that is going to bite us in the ass in the near future. When globalism takes a hit and the just-in-time system of everything global drops several notches we are going to find ourselves without choices even local ones. We are going to have to relearn so many traditional ways of utilizing every bit of food. Why will we have to do this well, because we will be hungry without food choices.
What will happen is the global food chain is going to collapse because of price and value quickly. Just as our basics of consumerism with its efficacy and so called value gives us more food it can work the other way and make food choices and supply drop quickly. Entire food types are going to disappear once we are in a food crisis. People will not be ready to adapt as quick as this failure will likely occur.
Learning to grown and prep food the way it used to be requires a lot of time and education. We are going to need women in the house not at work. Men are going to need to be planting or finding food not watching TV or doing their hobbies. These are just an example of a devolution of human lifestyles that in effect will be a revolutionary because few people except the very old remember food insecurity times.
We are so far from resilient and sustainable that the journey back is likely too far gone to recover without a large loss of life once this process gets in full swing. Food is what will likely destroy social cohesion. How many people do you know have ever gone more than a couple of days without eating? Not many. Try fasting for three days and get back to me. I fast twice a week for a full day. I do this a as a prep routine. I have done three days and it is a very interesting experience. Let me put it this way you are not a happy camper.
paulo1 on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 8:52 am
If I had access to a few full dumpsters on a weekly basis I would be raising some damn fine pork.
makati1 on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 9:38 am
This will not happen soon when the food basket of America is a desert and the erratic weather kills off crops before they can be harvested. The US imports far more food than most Americans realize. If it is not in season it is imported.
If you read the labels on the stuff you buy in the super market, you may be surprised where it came from. An American brand name is not necessarily made in the Us. I have Campbell’s mushroom soup from the US, Canada, and Malaysia. Read the labels.
joe on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 9:52 am
My fathers generation used to eat pigs feet, heads and offal, boiled into soups stews etc.
Chicken bones used to make soup, cans of beans watered down to make it last, of course lets not forget, margerine instead of butter, sometime milk, usually water, tea was for adults, and coffee, what a dream. A man gave a lady chocolates if he wanted to marry her and kids got an apple or and orange for Christmas.
His fathers life was harder.
You can rewind that back to before oil and imagine that a ‘journey’ was a couple of towns over. Food was for the lucky. Many people live like that today, its called the Third World.
ghung on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 11:02 am
Mak: The article is about the UK. You really are consumed with hate for the US,, BUT THE ARTICLE IS FROM THE UK. I’m not saying there isn’t waste in the US, but your making everything about the US is quite insane.
Miket on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 2:49 pm
If the farmers underproduce there’s a shortage of food in the supermarket! Overproduction in a good year means we don’t starve in a bad year.
I think ethanol should only be made from excess food and shut down during bad droughts or price spikes.
Boat on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 3:10 pm
Davy,
“Our lives revolve around our lives and not around food like it used to be. People have too many choices”.
It is better that our lives don’t revolve around food. That said I love all the choices I have.
“Many leftovers in times past would be made into a new dish”
Leftovers do not escape our house. We eat them. Does yours?
We should be eating less, local, seasonally, with as much of the product utilized as practical. Even our waste should be fed to pigs or composted.
Once again I am not overweight so speak for yourself. composted waste or pig feed is a nice idea where you can. But you do you really want to mandate trucks to go around and pick up food waste? Burn that fuel to do so? Some ideas don’t happen because the cost far outweighs good. Other wise it will happen, like recycling. There has to be a profit in it. PS around Houston it costs $65 to take a truck load to the dump. Sometimes good ideas are not cheap.
Boat on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 3:20 pm
Davy,
“This unsustainable food culture is something that is going to bite us in the ass in the near future. When globalism takes a hit and the just-in-time system of everything global drops several notches we are going to find ourselves without choices even local ones”
I envision a different future. If there were a huge shortage of workers I see most restaurants shutting down. Business would have to have a higher value and pay more per worker to get a worker. The world would compete with value instead of relying on growth for sales.I see much less waste in this type of environment.
Boat on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 4:18 pm
Davy,
How Hidden Labyrinths Under Cities Are Becoming Clean Energy Powerhouses
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2016/02/160205-district-energy-city-underground-energy/
Here is an example of waste being used.
Davy on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 6:34 pm
Boat, read our links and absorb our comments so you can envision the real future ahead. I have seen you becoming more desperate all the time with your position “all is well”. I know you acknowledge peak oil and climate change down the road. Apparently this makes you feel balanced. On the economic front your cornucopian position is getting a clock cleaning daily. I am not sure you understand sophisticated economics and system theory from what I read in your comments. If you stick around here we will keep you updated on impending economic downturn that appears to be a potential doozy in the making. This is going to turn your suburban Houston dream on its head.
Boat on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:01 pm
Davy,
That’s what other doomers were telling me in 2007. Then what happened? Are you now saying that this is the big one we will never recover from? I will put my money that good times are ahead. If I did invest in individual stocks now would be the time to go oil once Iran shows what they can do. Relax Davy it will all be ok.
GregT on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:15 pm
“That’s what other doomers were telling me in 2007. Then what happened? Are you now saying that this is the big one we will never recover from?”
What happened after 2007 Boat, was ‘The Global Financial Crisis’. Remember? The ‘BIG ONE’ that we still haven’t recovered from, and never will, despite how hard the eCONomists try to pretend that we will. How long this draws out is anybody’s guess, but the process is already well underway. Ignoring it will not make it go away. Ever.
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:22 pm
Boat, you like billions of other dopamine drive apes are clueless to what is going on and what we have done and what it means.
Clueless, clueless, clueless.
Atmospheric CO2 Rocketed to 405.6 ppm Yesterday — A Level not Seen in 15 Million Years
“Never has the Earth seen a CO2 build-up so rapid as the one produced by the human fossil fuel energy era. Rates of CO2 increase just keep ramping higher ever as the world’s climate sinks appear to be filling up. In this context, 2015 saw the swiftest pace of CO2 rise yet. Warming ocean surface waters can’t absorb as much CO2 as cooler oceans. And a record hot ocean during 2015 contributed to this extreme atmospheric CO2 accumulation. For the whole of the past year, CO2 built up in the atmosphere at a rate of 3.2 parts per million per annum. That’s well above the already raging pace of 2 parts per million average annual accumulation during the decade of the 2000s.”
http://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/05/co2-rockets-to-405-6-ppm-a-level-not-seen-in-15-million-years/
From 2011
Great Dying 252 million years ago coincided with CO2 build-up
“An MIT-led team of researchers announced earlier this month (November 18, 2011) that massive die-outs both in the oceans and on land 252 million years ago – a period known to geologists as the “Great Dying” (the Permian-Triassic boundary) – took place in less than 20,000 years. That’s a blink of an eye geologically speaking. What’s more, the researchers also found that this time period coincides with a massive buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or CO2, a greenhouse gas. They published their results in the journal Science in November, 2011.
In contrast to today, the group found that the average rate at which carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere during this time period – which was at the end of the Permian period – was slightly below the rate of carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere due to fossil fuel burning.”
http://earthsky.org/earth/great-dying-252-million-years-ago-concided-with-co2-build-up
Every extinction event (14 of them), including the KT (dinosaurs) was preceded by massive amounts of co2 releases that trigger many positive self reinforcing feedback loops, like ocean acidafication. The fossil record shows that no vertebrae over 99lbs survived any of them. Congratulations to capitalism for out doing what natural process could do or even a comet plus volcanism. A proud moment of celebration for the boats of the world. ALL HAIL CAPITALISM! OUR ONE TRUE GOD! Looks like the father is about to take us to the eternal shopping mall in the sky.
Asteroid impact, volcanism were one-two punch for dinosaurs
http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/10/01/asteroid-impact-volcanism-were-one-two-punch-for-dinosaurs/
Davy on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:27 pm
Boat this is more than about stocks. This is a serious situation and requires a level head. What happened in 2008 should be a sobering experience that says this time around we may not do so well. Your cavalier attitude is an example of what is wrong with many in the general public and why many are just frogs boiling in the waters of delusion.
Davy on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 7:35 pm
Boat read this link and give me your take:
“22 Signs That The Global Economic Turmoil We Have Seen So Far In 2016 Is Just The Beginning”
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/22-signs-that-the-global-economic-turmoil-we-have-seen-so-far-in-2016-is-just-the-beginning
“As bad as the month of January was for the global economy, the truth is that the rest of 2016 promises to be much worse. Layoffs are increasing at a pace that we haven’t seen since the last recession, major retailers are shutting down hundreds of locations, corporate profit margins are plunging, global trade is slowing down dramatically, and several major European banks are in the process of completely imploding. I am about to share some numbers with you that are truly eye-popping. Each one by itself would be reason for concern, but when you put all of the pieces together it creates a picture that is hard to deny. The global economy is in crisis, and this is going to have very serious implications for the financial markets moving forward. U.S. stocks just had their worst January in seven years, and if I am right much worse is still yet to come this year. The following are 22 signs that the global economic turmoil that we have seen so far in 2016 is just the beginning…”
makati1 on Fri, 5th Feb 2016 9:15 pm
Ghung…
“Each year, Americans waste 33 million tons of food….”
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/23/165774988/npr-the-ugly-truth-about-food-waste-in-america
33 million tons would feed the entire 100 million population of the Philippines every year.
“In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month”
http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts
“With an estimated 70 billion pounds of food waste in America each year,…”
http://www.feedingamerica.org/about-us/how-we-work/securing-meals/reducing-food-waste.html
Waste in America far exceeds ANY other country. Who cares what the UK wastes. It is minuscule compared to Americas abuse of food.