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Beyond the boardroom
Food waste pledges are only as good as the supply chain behind them
Earlier this year, Tesco missed its target to halve food waste in its own operations by 2025, pushing the deadline back to 2030. As one of the UK supermarket sector’ s biggest players, if even Tesco is struggling to hit these targets, there may be a bigger issue at play.
When a retailer sets a sustainability target like this, they can often ignore a glaring factor: the suppliers who are the ones to actually deliver it. The target is set by the end retailer, but a lot of the work happens lower down the chain, falling largely on the suppliers who store and pick the food. The UK Food and Drink Pact, the industry-wide goal to cut food waste by half per person by 2030, works the same way. The ambition sits with the retailers, but a lot of the pressure is carried by the suppliers.
Outdated technology is adding additional supply chain pressure
Buyers, like retailers, understandably want accuracy and timely delivery from their suppliers, and now sustainability has been thrown into that mix too. The trouble is that a lot of suppliers, despite their best efforts, struggle to meet sustainability targets because the systems they use just weren’ t built for the high-volume landscape they are operating in today.
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