Since we joined global food waste coalition Champions 12.3 and made a public commitment to play our part in halving global food loss and waste, we have been working hard over the last 12 months to reduce food waste not just within our own farms and factories, but across our entire value chain.
We are delighted to announce that in 2018 we have achieved a 20% reduction in edible food waste, removing over 1,400 tonnes of food waste against our 2017 position and it now represents just 0.8% of the food we produce.
We have recently been featured by Tesco as one of their suppliers who are taking significant action on food waste. You can find out more by reading the case study.
Champions 12.3 is a group of companies and organisations committed to achieving target 12.3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to halve food waste by 2030. As part of our Second Nature sustainability programme, we have pledged to become a zero edible food waste business by 2030 – this means eliminating edible food losses and waste entirely from our operations. The good news is that we are well on our way to achieving this goal.
Food waste in the UK totals 10.2 million tonnes per year, of which 1.8 million tonnes comes from food manufacture, 1 million from the hospitality sector, and 260,000 from retail, with the remainder from households.
At Cranswick, we are passionate about producing the highest quality food with the lowest possible impact. The detrimental environmental impacts associated with food waste are clear. We’re adopting new technologies and have mapped where we are wasting food across all of our sites, identifying when where and why food waste occurs. As a large portion comes from our production lines we believe it is therefore avoidable. This is why we’re continuing to invest heavily in our people, so they can help eliminate food waste both at work and throughout their communities at home – global change starts at a local level.
Other actions we are taking include:
All of our colleagues are inducted into our Second Nature sustainability strategy, which provides actionable tips and advice for reducing wastage, and staff are invited to become Cranswick Waste Warriors so they can put forward their own ideas and solutions. They produce our food and are best placed to tackle any waste at source.
In partnership with food distribution platform OLIO, we’ve saved more than 9,365kg of edible food from going to waste in our hometown of Hull, adding up to nearly 47,500 portions of food shared with those in need.
As part of our Hull Food Save community project, we are working closely with local charities such as EMS, a multi award winning charity working within the Hull community to alleviate food poverty. Donating our surplus food to EMS supports their Freedom Food initiative, which provides nutritious ready meals for underprivileged families and we help in providing up to 160 chilled, nutritious ready meals (which serve up to a family of four) five days a week which are delivered to five community fridges around Hull.
We’ve held surplus cooking workshops with our employees to demonstrate just how valuable so-called food ‘waste’ can be, whilst also giving them a skill they can share with their communities outside of work.
Find out more about by downloading our Food Loss and Waste case study, or download our Mapping and Measuring Food Waste document. The WRAP Food Waste Reduction Map can be found here.