The UN has a number of sustainability goals (SDGs) and SDG 12 seeks to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” The third target under this goal (Target 12.3) calls for cutting in half per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level, and reducing food losses along production and supply chains (including postharvest losses) by 2030. In our commitment to support this, we have signed up to WRAP and IGD’s initiative Target, Measure, Act. We share the ambition to halve food waste globally by 2030 and are a member of Champions 12.3, a coalition of executives from governments, businesses, international organisations, research institutions, farmer groups, and civil society dedicated to inspiring ambition, mobilising action, and accelerating progress toward achieving SDG Target 12.3 by 2030. At Premier Foods, we are working to monitor, report and reduce our food surplus in line with this and are proud of our record of sending 0% to landfill since 2013 and are working to move our waste up the food waste hierarchy.
Our total food production for this period was 347,168 tonnes. We have measured our overall food waste to be 7,791 tonnes, which equates to 2.24% of food produced (on a calendar year basis, as reported with Champions 12.3). The waste can be created by many different issues, such as not meeting quality standards, production over-runs, short shelf life of warehouse stock and floor waste during the packing process. The split of disposal of our 7,791 tonnes of waste is between anaerobic digestion and land injection of on-site effluent plant waste as fertiliser. Working on redistributing more of our surplus stock, we are proud to partner with Company Shop and support those most in need within our communities. Company Shop takes our edible but damaged and therefore unsaleable food and sells it to community members in need, at a discounted price. Profits are used to help fund activities and workshops for the local community which take place at Community Shop centres and include, for example, cookery lessons, craft sessions, lunch clubs and CV writing workshops.
This year, we strengthened our partnership with Company Shop and met our target to double the number of our manufacturing sites partnered with them, from three to six. With the Harnessing Harder to Reach Surplus initiative, Company Shop have been able to help us identify surplus stock created on our production lines. An example of this work is on our surplus OXO cubes, which are now repackaged and labelled before being sold to the members-only shops.
We redistributed around 1.5 million units via Company Shop to their members. These equate to 455 tonnes of food waste, or the equivalent of 1 million meals, which is an uplift of 49% compared with the previous year. This is also estimated to save 1,821 tonnes of CO2 emissions.