Sainsbury's Tackle Food Surplus and Food Waste

Sainsbury's, the UK's second largest grocery retailer, has the vision to be the most trusted retailer where people love to work and shop. That means living up to our values through the choices we make and the things we do. Helping to reduce food waste across the UK is central to this and as to highlight this, Sainsbury's has recently released details of its corporate food surplus and food waste data as part of its ongoing commitment to reduce food waste overall in the UK.

Mike Coupe, CEO, Sainsbury's, said: "Our values have been at the core of what we do at Sainsbury's since 1869 and they remain central to us today.

"Food waste is an issue where Sainsbury's wants to continue to make an impact. We have been working hard over the past few years to tackle food waste in our business and ensure as much food as possible is redistributed to those who need it – we are proud of the development of more than 1,000 Food Donation Partnerships with local charities. As well as looking at our own business, at the start of this year, we also launched our £10 million Waste less, Save more campaign to help households waste less and save more in their homes."

The steps taken to improve on food wastage include:

- Sourcing directly from producers to get product into store quicker and ensure it has a longer shelf-life
- Improvements on forecasting and planning what needs to be in-store on a daily and weekly basis
- Improved technology to better predict which products are going to fly off the shelves
- Investment in technology to help the retailer keep food fresher for longer
- Putting 'wonky veg' to good use

There are times when food surplus is unavoidable, and in these instances, Sainsbury's puts donating this surplus food to charity as an absolute priority, and has been working hard to ensure we are continually increasing the number of local food charities we work with. In the last year alone, the number of Sainsbury's stores with at least one Food Donation Partnership with a local charity increased by 145% from 215 in 2014/15 to 833 in 2015/16.

The retailer also commits to turning food waste into animal feed, as well as converting food waste into energy via anaerobic digestion.

To find out more, visit the Sainsbury's corporate website here
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