Radar 1/6 Retail
Secrecy clouds food waste truths
Three of the four big supermarkets in the UK have refused to publicly reveal how much food they throw away each year. According to Channel 4 news, Britain’s supermarkets
collectively generate
300,000 tonnes of food waste every year, but Tesco, Asda and Morrisons have declined to disclose their individual fig- ures when contacted by the news channel.
Tesco and Asda also refused to explain why they won’t release such data, while Morrisons claimed such informative was “commercially sensitive”. Despite this, all three were adamant they produced very little food waste. Only Sainsbury’s was prepared to publish its food waste figures and told Channel 4 it generated about 44,000 tonnes of food waste in 2011. The supermarket added that none of that ended in landfill with edible food going to charity, while the rest went to animal organisations or for processing through anaerobic digestion. Food waste author and campaigner Tristram Stuart told Channel 4 that greater transparency among the ‘big four’ would benefit everyone. “All these big supermarkets should be reporting how much food they waste on an annual basis. This would create transparency in the system and competition between supermarkets to appear the least wasteful,” he said.
However the British Retail Consortium’s environmental policy advisor Bob Gordon said supermarkets were “sceptical”” about how the figures might be used and that they already provide
data collectively to WRAP. “Retailers wouldn’t deliberately overstock and deliberately throw food away,” he said. “That would be a cost to their business and they’re trying very hard to minimise those costs from the outset to remain competitive.” Maxine Perella
Corporate strategy
Firms fail to account for climate change
Despite climate change posing a “substantial” risk to UK major companies less than half have contingency plans in place.
That is the conclusion of new research by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which conducted a poll of UK FTSE 100 companies as part of its Insight into Climate Change Adaptation by UK Companies report. It found that while 80% of respondents had identified substantial risks to their business from climate change, just 46% said they had plans in place to protect
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