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Don't lay food waste at the supermarkets’ door
Justin King, Chief Executive, Sainsbury's12 Aug 2009
So apparently it's the supermarkets' fault again: the Government's new food strategy, published this week, is highly critical of “buy one, get one free” offers.
By encouraging consumers to buy more than they need, the argument runs, the supermarkets are responsible for them wasting food. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn was dismissive of sell-by dates too, supposedly another incentive to throw away good food.
It's enough to make you choke on your prawn sandwich (assuming you eat it before the use-by date). Except it isn't true. Mr Benn is aiming at the wrong target if he really wants to tackle the UK's food waste problem.
For a start, there's a recession on: such promotions are a great idea for customers trying hard to cut costs. If we're able to buy large quantities of a product at a good price and pass on some of the saving, I don't think government should get in the way of that — and most shoppers wouldn't thank ministers for doing so.
But the whole argument is irrelevant anyway. Across the industry over the past couple of years, there's been a steady move away from buy one, get one free (bogofs) and towards price-led promotions such as 25 per cent off and half-price, led by customer behaviour in response to the crunch. Bogofs make up only around 10 per cent of Sainsbury's promotions now.
What's more, there is no evidence that this has had any effect on waste. In its report on food waste last year, the Government's Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) did not identify bogofs as a significant problem because the vast majority of such promotions are on store-cupboard items — baked beans, cereals, coffee — not perishables. Instead, WRAP's report highlighted problems in domestic food storage, food preparation and cooking.
I agree: the big issues here are loss of cooking skills and loss of confidence in storing food properly. People often prepare too much food. They don't have the confidence or the knowledge to reuse the leftovers or freeze them for another day. We've tried to tackle this through our “Feed your family for a fiver” advertising and our “Love your leftovers” campaign working with the Women's Institute.
It is true that people's uncertainty over how to store food has made them more slavish in sticking to use-by dates, rather than using their own judgment. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that date-marking has been one of the most important advances in food safety over recent decades. Most guidelines are there for sensible food safety reasons.
The idea that we somehow put on short use-by dates to catch people out is just silly. Longer dates would make life easier for us, since they give us more time to get the product to the customer. We try to ensure our “sell-by” dates give customers plenty of time to enjoy the food at its best before the “use-by” date. And while a product like, say, biscuits might be perfectly safe to eat after the “best-before” date, would people really want us to put on a later date, by which time the biscuits might be edible but stale?
Certainly we need to do more to educate people about use-by, sell-by and best-before dates, and so does the Food Standards Agency. Likewise we urgently need a return to the teaching of what used to be unfashionably called Home Economics.
We want our customers to be able to make informed choices, and thereby reduce food waste. If we trust them to do so, will Mr Benn?
Reader views (2)
Another aspect to this is the fact that, in the "old days" when mainly women went shopping on the high street or in markets, they carried bags for shopping AND used public transport, so not only got exercise in doing so, but could only carry a limited amount.
Nowadays they just need to waddle from the checkout to the Chelsea, then home and to the sofa!]
No wonder we are over stocked, wasteful and overweight, Supermarkets are to blame for many reasons other that "two for ones".
- Darius, London UK, 13/08/2009 10:00
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Supermarket shopping (but not necessarily supermarkets) is to blame for much food waste, because it is predicated on a large weekly shop. Needs assessment on a weekly basis will always be less efficient than a daily one, from a food waste point of view.
As to the blame for this, it lies at the doors of local authorities who grant and preserve free parking for massive out-of-town supermarket destinations. At the time same, these local authorities provide no visitor parking for local shops in inner cities, and actively subsidise the supermarket drive-shop by imposing residents-only zones on these inner city shopping areas. They do so based only on local support of 7% through local consultation, in mainly pedestrian areas with high concentrations of poverty and residential density.
There is a role for supermarkets providing goods on a fortnightly basis, but supplemented by local shops selling fresh ingredients for instant use. Supermarkets are fairly efficient creatures and have no further need of the planning subsidy which they have had for the last 50 years. You can't fairly blame them for taking the handout, but it isn't acceptable for supermarkets to be disingenous by claiming that consumer choice is the main factor in this less sustainable, exclusively-weekly shopping model.
- Reg, London, inner city, 12/08/2009 13:56
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