PP27: Reductions

At Little Chef, at Tesco and now at Starbucks, everywhere I have worked has been guilty of throwing away massive amounts of out of date food products. Now to their credit they each ran pretty impressive waste control and stock management systems – because of course it is in their interests to do so. Yet it still didn’t prevent ugly scenes at the end of the day with workers bagging up perfectly good sandwiches, muffins etc and throwing them straight into the bin.

I hear that in some areas supermarkets and shops have deals with local homeless centres to provide them with the unwanted goods. Supermarkets also manage to shift a large majority of their soon to be out of date goods via the ‘reduced isle’. What makes things stranger is that I have heard from multiple sources that ‘best before’ dates really don’t mean a great deal, with most food being perfectly good days or even weeks after that date. My parents have told me that not so long ago supermarkets were able to sell out of date products at a knock down price, but are now unable to do so because of health and safety regulations.

So I suggest two policies to help minimise this waste. Allow restaurants and food retailers to once again sell out of date produce in separate, well-marked food isles with all the responsibility for this purchase taken by the customer. Secondly local governments should compile lists of local charities, hostels and homes etc that could make use of waste food products and distribute them to local businesses and ask for assistance. Nothing more than that. Simply make people aware of the waste and bring organisations together to take advantage of the opportunities this can provide.

Easy stuff.