How Asda is working to reduce food waste
Senior Manager for Zero Waste at Asda, Karen Todd, explains how we're working to reduce food waste by at least 50% by 2030.
Cutting out food waste is incredibly important to us and our customers and we are pulling out all the stops to make sure we reduce food waste by at least 50% by 2030.
It’s a big target and it means not only reducing our own operational waste but helping customers, colleagues and suppliers do the same.
We operate a zero waste policy, which means reducing, reusing, recycling, redistributing, repurposing and recovering as much operational waste as possible and sending no waste to landfill.
We are really proud of how colleagues across the country have worked really hard in their local communities. This hard work has seen us increase the amount of food donated to charity through our back of store donation program by 58%. Through our Fight Hunger Create Change partnership we donated 4.2m meals last year from depots, home offices and back of store.
This makes sure that food which cannot be sold - but is still edible - goes to those who need it most in the community.
In fact, our total food distribution has increased 98% in 2019, which includes donations as well as animal feed, commercial distribution and customer giveaways.
But we know more needs to be done to reduce waste. Figures from UK sustainability charity WRAP say that In the UK, 9.5 million tonnes of food are wasted every year; 70% of this comes from our homes. Of that, 4.5 million tonnes could have been eaten.
This is why we are supporting WRAP’s 'Wasting Food: It's Out of Date' campaign, as we believe raising awareness of food waste as well as providing clear guidance for customers, will make a significant difference to reducing food waste and to help them save money at the same time.
You'll find more information about the campaign here and can see what we at Asda are doing to tackle food waste here.