About 70% of the UK’s plastic waste comes from packaging while, each year, the UK throws away about 9.5m tonnes of food waste. As the main supplier of our food and groceries, supermarkets have a vital role to play in tackling this problem by helping to engage consumers and rethink industry practices.
It’s a responsibility Tesco is taking seriously. With that in mind, it has committed to ambitious targets to halve food waste in its own operations and make all its own-brand packaging fully recyclable by the end of 2025.
But what are the challenges faced by the retailer and the UK as a whole when it comes to reducing waste? What happens to all that unsold food? And what does the future look like?
Decreasing packaging
While recycling is vital, removing the need for it in the first place is an obvious first step on the road to reducing waste packaging. Since 2019, Tesco has removed or reduced more than 5,900 tonnes of packaging [pdf]. While some items, such as cucumbers, still need to be wrapped in plastic to help them last longer (nobody likes a mushy cuke), Tesco is continuing to make changes wherever it can. One trial currently taking place is removing the plastic tray from its mince packaging: a simple step that has resulted in the product line using almost 70% less plastic.
Changing packaging
For the remaining packaging that does need to be recycled, the process is not without challenges. One example is the difficulty of recycling black plastic, for the simple reason that it’s harder for the sorting machines used in recycling facilities to identify it against a black conveyor belt.
That’s why Tesco has switched all its black packaging to colours such as green and brown, which stand a much better chance of being spotted by those recycling machines. A simple solution but one the supermarket has already delivered, and on a huge scale.
The supermarket is also taking steps to swap plastic for paper, wherever possible. Many items, such as Tesco own-brand Scottish porridge oats and Tesco Finest pastas are now wrapped in paper to help remove some of the plastic packaging used across its food ranges. However, some products, such as meat and milk, will still require plastic wrapping and film lids to reduce contamination risks and preserve the product, ultimately reducing food waste.
Recycling packaging
Currently, 96% of Tesco packaging is fully recyclable but, as anyone who’s ever squinted at the recycling signs on the back of a plastic bottle knows, the rules around what can be recycled at home vary from council to council.
“Recycling regulation is like a patchwork quilt across the UK at the moment, and that can make it really challenging for retailers to give a consistent message on recycling,” says James Bull, head of food waste and packaging at Tesco.
The retailer is also doing its bit on soft plastics, which most councils do not collect from homes for recycling, so it typically goes to waste. Customers can bring all types of soft plastics, such as crisp packets, salad packets and microwavable pouches to Tesco collection points, regardless of where they were purchased. To date, it has collected more than 2,000 tonnes of soft plastic at its in-store collection points. These collections ensure plastic doesn’t go to landfill and, where possible, is turned into new products, such as strawberry planters for schools.
The outlook will be improved later this year when the government’s Simpler Recycling initiative gets underway, ending the “postcode lottery” whereby different councils collect different materials for recycling.
Supporting a circular economy
If done correctly, reusable packaging can be even better than recycling; the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that at least 20% of plastic packaging could be replaced by reusable systems. Along with there being less need to make more packaging, reusable containers also require less energy for collecting and cleaning than would be needed to recycle the packaging.
That’s why in 2020, Tesco launched a partnership with reusable packaging experts Loop, beginning with a year-long pilot that saw 150 products in reusable packaging becoming available to order from Tesco online.
This was followed by an in-store prefill pilot, which enabled customers visiting trial stores to buy popular products in reusable packaging. To encourage shoppers to return the packaging, a deposit was paid for each item, which was refunded in full when customers returned the packaging.
Currently, the lessons learned from these pilots are being used across the retail industry to understand what’s needed to roll out reusable packaging more widely in future, so watch this space.
Feeding, not throwing
In tandem with its efforts to make packaging more sustainable, Tesco is working on reducing food waste, in store, in our homes and among its suppliers, as much as possible. It’s a complex issue given how difficult it is to predict how fluctuations in customer demand can lead to unexpected surpluses, or good spells of weather can lead to suppliers being left with an excess of crops. Yet Tesco is committed to halving food waste and aims for 85% of unsold food that’s still safe to be eaten to be redistributed to people or animals by December 2025.
To achieve this, Tesco has built up a network of partners, including the food redistribution charity FareShare and food sharing app Olio. Since Tesco and FareShare started working together almost 13 years ago, they have redistributed the equivalent of more than 220m meals of surplus food to charities and community groups. For any items that FareShare is unable to redistribute, Tesco partners with Olio, which lists items on the app, ready to be collected for free by people living nearby.
With a growing understanding of how vital it is to reduce waste for our planet’s health, it’s clear we all have a part to play – plenty of food for thought for us all.
Want to know more? Watch the video Journey to Greener Groceries: Food Waste and Packaging, to see how Tesco is having a real impact on food and packaging waste
