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Outdated technology is adding additional supply chain pressure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.
A lot of the warehouse and supply chain systems running today were last updated around six years ago, and our research found that 37 percent of supply chain managers said these old systems were the main reason for food wastage. For example, in stock rotation: if a warehouse management system can’t track food expiry dates properly, there’s no way to make sure the oldest stock goes out first. So, whatever is closest may be picked first, while the older stock sits at the back and is eventually past its use date by the time it’s reached.
The cost of avoidable food waste
In reality though, a lot of food waste isn’t due to the food slowly going off. It’s the avoidable mistakes, such as over-ordering and simple handling errors that then lead to larger supply chain issues, such as entire pallets of produce being ordered unnecessarily. Between tight margins and short shelf lives, these errors add up, and over the course of a year can become a serious amount of wasted stock, and resulting costs, with the average business losing £156,000 annually to avoidable waste.
The good news is that there are solutions. Over-ordering is a forecasting problem. Poor rotation usually means you don’t really know what stock you’re holding or where it is. Handling errors come down to process and training. By investing in new warehouse technology, the clear business case for modernization to ensure sustainability rings loud and true.
Reaching the 2030 target
2030 is not an unrealistic target, well within the reach of most suppliers. But only if they start spending on modernization processes now, instead of waiting for a customer or a regulator to force their hand.
So, what does investing in a warehouse management system look like? First, connecting the systems that are working in isolation. When your forecasting, stock and staffing systems all have clear visibility over data, you can see what’s happening in real time across the entire warehouse. Then, it’s about using that insight for accuracy and efficiency, with the end goal of reducing waste. For one warehouse that might mean voice-directed picking for warehouse staff to cut errors. For another it might mean automation that scales up and down for seasonality peaks. What each supplier needs will depend on how they run, but the basic idea holds: build the system around the warehouse, not the other way round.
There’s a cost to getting this wrong that goes beyond money. When stock is lost or wasted, it can damage relationships with retailers and chip away at customer trust and brand reputation. Building a strong reputation takes years, but it can be damaged very quickly.
Social media has made this even more important. A single video can reach thousands of people in hours. Take the “Food Waste Inspector”, the anonymous campaigner who started filming supermarket bins full of in-date food and posting the clips on Instagram and TikTok. Within months, he had more than 70,000 followers, attracted national headlines, and M&S and Waitrose had both launched investigations. That waste sat at the retail end, but the same risk runs through the length of the chain.
Pledges are made in the boardroom and kept in the warehouse
Food waste ranks among the most pressing challenges confronting the global food system, bearing enormous economic, environmental, and social costs. The UN estimates that 13.2 percent of food is lost between harvest and retail, with a further 19 percent then wasted in shops and households, and that food loss and waste generate eight-to-ten percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Tackling it demands action from industry leaders, and, by extension, their suppliers.
Boardroom promises are only as good as the warehouse behind them. For suppliers to deliver, the systems have to work for the world today.
John Burgess
John Burgess is Innovation Director at Balloon One. Balloon One is a UK supply chain technology specialist that helps distribution, manufacturing, retail and ecommerce businesses improve operational efficiency. It implements warehouse management, enterprise resource planning, transport management and automation solutions, enabling customers to streamline logistics, optimize inventory and build more resilient, scalable supply chains.