With consumers becoming ever more concerned with sustainability, who’s winning the race to reduce food waste?

We explore how a holistic oversight in food production can make the difference between it being efficient, sustainable, and the kind of needless waste that both businesses and consumers are increasingly becoming less tolerant of.

In BRIEF

• With major retailers binning their best-before dates, it’s clear that consumer attitudes towards food waste are getting stronger and can’t be ignored.
• But the food waste problem is only increasing, with a study finding a 60% increase in food wate produced in just six months.
• Whilst incremental changes to manufacturing and waste processes such as waste segregation can make a difference, real change requires a collaborative, holistic approach.
• These solutions, such as ERP, won’t just make your business more efficient, it will allow you to back up your sustainability claims with ever-more important action.

Making the headlines recently has been the news that major supermarket chains, notably Aldi, M&S and Asda, are scrapping best before dates on fruit and vegetable produce in a bid to reduce domestic food waste.

It’s a big shift, and one that reflects a growing concern around consumer responsibility for waste, and the impact of food manufacturing on the environment.

The scale of this impact cannot be overstated. Sustainable Packaging News recently highlighted the problem by referencing a recent study by Bosch that ranks the UK as the 18^th worst country in the world for household food waste, producing more than five million tonnes of food waste per annum.

The Grocer recently reported that disruption across the supply chain has caused food waste to skyrocket – a 60% increase in just six months, according to a study by Sodexo. Working to avoid uncertainty and understand where sustainability can be built into the production and disposal of food packaging will be hugely important.

The key, as Food Manufacturing has clearly stated, is collaboration. Because every partner along the chain of production has a role to play in sustainability.

From carbon footprint ratings for machinery to the segregation of consumables such as lubricants and labels, there are opportunities across every aspect of the manufacturing chain to build in efficient and sustainable practices.

But the article also looks beyond the smaller and more incremental changes alongside a recent report from the US-based Packaging and Machinery Manufacturers Institute that explores how to build in sustainability to packaging production processes.

A key takeaway from the whitepaper is the importance of a third-party waste management provider who can audit and understand waste processes in a holistic way and build in these collaborative improvements.

From the findings in our ‘ESG Report’, we revealed that almost half (48%) of businesses say they aren’t doing enough to reduce the amount of waste they produce. That’s a lot of potential for change.

As we highlighted in our blog, waste management specialists have the knowledge to make those changes on a large, meaningful scale.

For example, a tracking system like an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) allows food manufacturers to track information related to shopping, packaging, and production into a single location, allowing you to easily identity areas of inefficiency.

This kind of holistic oversight can make the difference between efficient, sustainable production, and the kind of needless waste that both businesses and consumers are increasingly becoming less tolerant of.

After all, every meal is important, and every penny saved can make a difference.

iN the news

• Aldi to scrap best before dates on fruit and veg – Food Manufacture
• M&S removes ‘best before’ dates from fruit and vegetables to reduce food waste – The Independent
• Asda scraps ‘best before’ dates from many fresh foods to help cut waste – The Guardian
• Reducing waste in food manufacturing – Axil Integrated Services
• The role of packaging in reducing national food waste figures – Sustainable Packaging News
• Sustainability success depends on collaboration – Food Manufacturing
• Supply chain crisis leads to 60% increase in food waste in just six months – The Grocer