Words by Smiley Team
Supermarkets in the UK are said to throw away the equivalent of 190 million meals a year. To confront this problem, supermarket chain Morrisons is hiking its efforts to combat waste by redistributing surplus food or items nearing their sell-by date.
Its efforts are initially focused on six stores in Edinburgh, where it will offer unsold food at budget prices via the Too Good To Go food waste app, and for free via partner organisations.
[Learn more about initiatives to make consumption and production more sustainable]
“We all need to see waste as a resource to be repurposed and reused,” said Jamie Winter, the sustainability procurement director at the supermarket. “The technology, creativity and will exists – it's a question of harnessing the right process for the right type of waste and executing it well.”
The chain will make resourceful uses of unwanted or inedible products, turning stale bread into animal feed and waste cooking oil into biodiesel.
They will offer on-site waste collection points where customers can leave their rubbish, including soft plastics which most local authorities find hard to recycle.
While many supermarket waste gets sent abroad to be dumped and incinerated, polluting the local environment, Morrisons promises they will avoid this.
“All waste collected in our stores will be recycled here in the UK - we will not reprocess anything abroad,” said Jamie.
The trial in Edinburgh is just the start and depending on how effective their strategy proves, they will introduce it to more stores across the country. “If we’re successful, we’ll roll this zero waste store concept out across the UK as fast as we can,” Jamie added.
