A third of food is wasted. How can supermarkets innovate to change this?

Food waste statistics are astounding: 25% to 30% of all food produced is lost or wasted globally, at a cost of $1 trillion per year.? 8-10% of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to food loss and waste.?? Food retailers have recognised the need to act, and most UK supermarkets have committed to halving food waste by 2030.?

Retailers that embrace innovation will achieve rapid reductions in food waste. There are multiple applications of innovations:? New technologies can upcycle waste into new products.?? Innovations make it easier for grocers to identify and discount food that’s about to expire.? Much waste takes place at home, and novel active packaging that changes colour when food has gone off could soon replace misleading best-before dates.? Already supermarkets have adopted some new technologies in the fight against food waste.? However, innovations have so far been underexploited by the retail sector despite their proven benefits.??

Four approaches to food waste exist in the grocery sector (Figure 1).? Innovation can play a role in all four, but technology readiness levels vary:? Solutions are most advanced in waste prevention, where established technologies identify and manage food close to expiry.?? By contrast, innovations that could influence consumer behaviour are currently at low readiness levels, with smart packaging yet to become viable at scale.?

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Figure 1 - Four strategies for addressing food waste with innovation use cases?

Innovation can prevent food waste

Waste prevention is more efficient than waste management - and innovations show strong potential to enable supermarkets to eliminate up to a third of the waste they produce.???

Technologies can assist supermarkets’ efforts to discount and sell food close to expiry.? WhyWaste offers advanced date checking and markdown price optimisation.?? Its customers have generated 30% less waste and 17% revenue growth from optimising discount pricing.? Too Good To Go has acquired FoodMemo, a platform that makes identifying and diverting food that’s about to expire more efficient and accurate, eliminating the need for error-prone manual processes.? Applying these technologies could enhance Sainsbury’s ‘Taste Me, Don’t Waste Me’ and Tesco’s Reduced in Price, Just as Nice’ - both initiatives to encourage shoppers to buy food close to expiry.?

Novel packaging that stops food from spoiling can also prevent food waste.? Apeel offers edible coating for produce that enhances shelf life and reduces the need for plastic packaging. In 2022, the company calculated it prevented 44 million pieces of fruit from going to waste.? Lidl has joined forces with Empa in Switzerland to develop a protective coating for produce made from residue left over when the fruit is juiced.? Packaging innovations like these promise to prevent waste at source, delivering financial and environmental benefits to grocers.?

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Food Tech could enable greater redistribution of food to local communities

Diverting surplus food to local communities is a priority for UK supermarkets - and is much needed at a time of acute food insecurity.? Tesco alone donated more than 52 million meals last year.? Supermarket chains have already adopted innovations that facilitate the redistribution of surplus to local communities -? and there is room to scale this up further.?

Food Tech innovation could redirect even more meals to local communities.?? Sainsbury’s annual report indicates that ~12% of the company’s combined surplus and waste food is donated.? The supermarket could likely redistribute more meals if finding and donating surplus became less complex.? The FoodCloud platform directly connects food retailers to local community groups and makes food donations fully trackable and traceable, facilitating end-to-end store-level measurement.? Associated carbon footprint is also measured. The company already works with grocers including Tesco and Aldi.? Similarly, Too Good To Go’s acquisition of FoodMemo provides another solution for increasing donations to local communities.?

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Innovation could transform food waste into new products

Wherever possible, waste strategies should maximise the value of food.? Innovation provides ways to transform byproducts into new products, retaining more of the economic value of food as well as avoiding the environmental impacts of waste.

Tesco has shown its willingness to innovate by executing a trial to transform back-of-store non-edible waste into alternative animal feed using black soldier fly.?? Upcycling reduces the amount of food broken down by anaerobic digestion, and less anaerobic digestion means fewer planet-warming gases.?

Tesco’s trial is a good start - but the potential for upcycling remains largely untapped.? The Ellen MacArthur Foundation points to examples such as the Nutrient Upcycling Alliance, which uses urban organic waste streams to make a wide variety of products.??Examples abound of companies that turn waste foods into valuable products, from Barnana, a snack company selling “upcycled” banana snacks made from bruised, overripe, or otherwise damaged bananas, to Xilinat, who ferment corn waste into xylitol, a sugar substitute.? Upcycling opportunities are underexploited to date. Supermarkets that adopt innovative approaches to upcycling waste could even launch own-label products made with upcycled ingredients.?

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Novel solutions could stop unnecessary food waste at home

Supermarkets have encouraged their customers to waste less food at home, but devising effective interventions has proved challenging.? Active packaging offers a potential solution.?

Three-quarters of UK food waste is avoidable, with people often throwing food away prematurely due to potentially misleading on-pack messaging.? Mimica Lab develops packaging solutions that provide highly accurate indicators of freshness, preventing meat and dairy from being discarded sooner than necessary.? The company claims this could cut unnecessary food waste in half.? Other examples include RipeSense, which incorporates a gas-sensing indicator, and packaging with built-in PH indicators to show when milk has soured.? Active packaging technologies have yet to be proven or cost-effective at scale - but they could become an essential tool for reducing waste.? Supermarkets that invest ahead in these innovations may cut waste faster than rivals.?

What are the next steps for supermarkets??

Figure 2 summarises the actions grocers can take to harness innovation for food waste reduction, showing technological readiness level and food waste reduction potential based on best-available data.?

Figure 2 - Summary of actions grocers can take to reduce waste through innovation

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Supermarkets have shown they are willing to adopt innovative solutions for food waste.? Further technologies will need to be adopted, integrated, and deployed at scale if retailers are to meet their commitments to cut food waste in half this decade.? Retailers that move quickly will deliver meaningful benefits to customers while contributing to solving a major environmental problem.?

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