The Reduce Supermarket Wastage Campaign!

mark_dumpleton

All,

I am sure many of you are aware of the thread regarding free or highly reduced foods that are near to their 'best before' date.

Many people, however, do not know that there are masses of foodstuffs that are thrown away by stores each evening. Larger stores such as Tesco, Morrisons and I am sure many others throw away over £60 worth of stock each night. Staff are not allowed to take it either, and it goes straight into an industrial sized skip. Many of the products thrown away are either very slightly damaged (such as dented tins which aren't worth reducing) or are items such as bread which are nearing their expiry date. This bread could be frozen and re-used at later dates by members of the public.

I am sure there are other reasons for them doing this, but I believe one of the reasons behind large companies doing this is to protect their profits - if they start giving away food which they would normally throw away, then customers are less likely to need to purchase, say, bread the next day, reducing their profits.

However, in the current climate with the 'credit crunch' and other financial problems and hardship many are going through - is it not time this was re-considered by large companies?

An article in a newspaper this morning concerning this, and "freegans" - those who go into the bins where items are thrown and take them out for their own use - highlighted this issue.

I believe that it would be much more beneficial for both customers (who would be saving money) and for the companies themselves (who would find their image would increase among shoppers) if these large supermarkets would offer their food which is normally considered 'waste' and thrown away at the end of a night for free. It is only going to a landfill site otherwise so, instead of throwing it away and wasting food which can still be eaten, why not do their bit for the economy and help those consumers who may be feeling the 'credit crunch' the most?

As the slogan of one large supermarket chain goes - "Every Little Helps".

With enough support from fellow MSEr's we can bring this to the attention of not just Martin Lewis but the supermarkets themselves, and can help consumers across the country.

Let's reduce the pointless wastage of foods that supermarkets have!

jenniewb

Many people, however, do not know that there are masses of foodstuffs that are thrown away by stores each evening. Larger stores such as Tesco, Morrisons and I am sure many others throw away over £60 worth of stock each night. Staff are not allowed to take it either, and it goes straight into an industrial sized skip. Many of the products thrown away are either very slightly damaged (such as dented tins which aren't worth reducing) or are items such as bread which are nearing their expiry date. This bread could be frozen and re-used at later dates by members of the public.

I know! this is GUTTING! I used to be a student and used to go to a particular supermarket in the city part of London which regularly reduces thier food. I was waiting for them to reduce all the freshly made sandwiches. Myself and about 10 others, they literally had full stock left for some reason. All BBE that day.:j

We all waited from around 8.30 and at 10pm, (a long time believe me!)a store assistant came over and bagged the lot in see through plastic bags and explained they were not allowed to reduce them and they had to be thrown away:eek: - there were atleast 5 bags I counted- maybe more, all the size of large black binliners- masses of food! there were homeless people waiting with us, city graduates on thier 12K wages, students, people who needed the food! we all begged with them, said it would be "at our own risk", asked if they would put them in bins we could later raid.... still no, no, no, no. "We cannot give these to you as if there is a problem, you could still sue".

PC gone mad.

Pret is pretty good, they either give it to the homeless or leave it in binbags if the homeless charities dont want anymore, (believe it or not, charities also can get too much free food and also end up throwing it away on occassions!) this- if your good at knowing what shapes to look for, can be a gold-mine:rotfl: for people walking the streets after about 8pm, pret sandwiches all round-:T normaly you can find these by someone who has already opened them to be ransacked!

zebulon

my local sainsbury's is pretty good at reducing A LOT some food at the end of the day .
so not free by can be VERY CHEAP - and great for everything tha can go in freezer

makes me think of an article I was reading the other day ....
ah, it was about that:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080704/thl-italy-food-health-cheese-f403657.html

Little_Richard

At a new M & S shop I saw staff throwing away 8 large bin bags of food. I asked them why was there so much waste food and they said M & S always over stocks in new shops, so they can find out the maximum sales for each item. This includes very low selling items which the staff know will never sell. They said they if they took the food home or sold it at half price they would lose their jobs. We should all Email M & S and ask them to find a better way to work out maximum sales, and to reduce the price of food which is going out of date.

jenniewb

Little_Richard wrote: »

At a new M & S shop I saw staff throwing away 8 large bin bags of food. I asked them why was there so much waste food and they said M & S always over stocks in new shops, so they can find out the maximum sales for each item. This includes very low selling items which the staff know will never sell. They said they if they took the food home or sold it at half price they would lose their jobs. We should all Email M & S and ask them to find a better way to work out maximum sales, and to reduce the price of food which is going out of date.

Agreed! M&S are one of the only supermarkets who dont reduce- or to do it to a really futile degree- so it ends up pointless as tescos etc are still way chepear! and strangely enough, m&s seem not to be doing as well as tescos, asda...etc
manybe they need to change the ethos, give alot, get alot back!

kt33uk

I remember hearing from someone once that the reason supermarkets bin the OOD food at the end of the day is that some stores used to give the stuff away and somebody ended up with food poisoning and sued the company. Don't know if this is just another urban myth though. But in this day and age of sue anybody that upsets you I could quite believe it.

Bobbity123

We live in a small town (approx 6000 people) and we only have 1 supermarket (Tesco) I go each evening at 9pm to see what is reduced and I am certainly not alone!

Anything that is unsold is bagged and binned which on some night equates to a shopping trolley full - stupid wastage.:mad:

When the government is saying that Britons waste food surely a large percentage of that is because of this needless wastage by supermarkets.

How do you think we should progress this?

mark_dumpleton

That was the reason behind starting this thread and therefore campaign - not enough companies are reducing their food to a level which will make them get bought - it is a complete waste to think that companies are throwing away masses of products like this when the cost of living is increasing and many people are finding they have less and less disposable income.

I think if this thread is popular enough then it will be brought to the attention of Martin, who will obviously know about the problem already but it will be highlighted by the amount of people voicing their support for this campaign.
It is about time that supermarkets especially played their part in reducing wastage - if not by buying less stock then by giving this reduced food to good causes or reducing it to a level which can be more beneficial than chucking it out as waste.

What I cannot understand is why supermarkets will reduce items such as sandwiches or cartons of soup which are at their best before date, but not bread? Bread can be frozen and therefore used again, it can be used for toast, there are many other ways too!

Venezia

Is it in the interests of the supermarkets to throw away the food rather than to sell at a reduced price? Can they claim the full cost ( net to them) of the unsold perishable food items as a tax loss against their profits?

RuthMarianna

Maybe we should mount a campaign of emailing and phoning our local supermarkets. If enough of us did it all at once we are sure to get attention. I would do it now myself but one lone voice would not achieve much.

KatieKins

I worked at Sainsburys for years at the weekend and I did reductions for the produce dept. We used to dispose of masses of stock, most of it is poor management, i.e. stuff gets missed out in stock and new stuff stacked on top of it, or they don't estimate how much they really need to reduce it by. In my opinion, most of the stuff we chucked, could have been sold had the reducing started earlier and been more of a mark down.

I used to work a couple of boxing days when the store was closed and I would go in and gut the department of out of date food and this is when you could really see the waste, Whole boards of items - sprouts, potatoes etc which never even made it onto the shop floor, just left out the back and chucked!

It really was so bad, but its all in the interest of saving themselves money and not making too much of a loss.