Off The Shelf #23: Supermarket Sweep
No Dale Winton, unfortunately. But there are other reasons to be upbeat.
Source: Tara Clark on Unsplash
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Actually, you know what? I said in the tagline there’d be no Dale Winton. But why shouldn’t there be? I might as well treat you to an early episode of Supermarket Sweep*, for free. Here you go. Don’t say this newsletter doesn’t offer value.
Anyway, enough procrastinating. This week, I thought I’d do a general sweep of the sustainable food headlines I’ve come across over the past week or so. As I sorted through them, I noticed that most were related to supermarkets, and the work they’ve been doing to improve their operations from an environmental perspective. Then the headline just kind of wrote itself, and I knew I was onto a winner.
We often give supermarkets a hard time, because they’re big and corporate, and it’s easy to assume they’re the bad guys when it comes to sustainability. But let’s give them credit when it’s due: some of these initiatives can only be viewed positively. Here are a few of the stories that have caught my eye:
Tesco is accelerating its efforts to meet sustainability targets, including a commitment to halve food waste by 2025. That would put it 5 years ahead of the target laid out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12 (to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns). Importantly, Tesco is linking executive pay to these targets. This is a key step which, in my view, makes it much more likely to yield genuine results than if nobody was being incentivised or held to account. Tesco will continue to partner with food waste companies like Olio to make this happen.
Also on the subject of food waste, Sainsbury’s launched a pop-up, designed to show the public how there are creative and unexpected ways to freeze food, which can help to reduce the potential for waste. While part of me thinks they only did this so they could use the awful name ‘Sainsfreeze’, and I’m not sure how much impact this one-off event will have actually had, it was an interesting concept nonetheless.
Aldi has opened its first eco store, which will be rolled out across other locations if successful. The physical store itself will be more eco-friendly, with sustainable building materials, renewable power sources and energy-saving initiatives. It will also feature recycling stations for customers, and will offer the option for refill points, where customers can fill their own containers with things like nuts and coffee, in a bid to reduce the need for unnecessary packaging.
The John Lewis and Waitrose partnership is committing to a new biodiversity plan, pledging zero deforestation in the sourcing of key commodities in its own-brand supply chains. As part of this, the retailer is partnering with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to invest £2 million in two conservation projects - one in Norfolk, and one in the Noyyal and Bhavank river basins in Southern India.
Every little helps.
*For those of you that grew up on another planet (or outside of the UK), or who became culturally conscious after the year 2000, Supermarket Sweep was a bit of a British institution. Contestants would be required to race madly around a studio kitted out as a generic supermarket, looking for specific items within a ridiculously short timeframe. It was very entertaining. I can’t speak to the sustainability of the show, given it encouraged profligate consumption and I’m not sure who whether anybody actually all of that fruit, but come on. Look at those outfits.
Data as of 9 October 2022. Just to keep my senior politician readership out of hot water on Sunday morning TV. Price of milk represented by the average price of comparable 2-pint bottles at 5 major retailers in the United Kingdom (Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury’s Waitrose and Marks & Spencer). Index is equally weighted and based on online prices. Methodology is purely proprietary and utterly unscientific. For actual price data that might be remotely useful for economic analysis, try the Office for National Statistics.
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The Tesco exec pay thing is really interesting! (Also, far too many hours have been spent in our house seriously discussing our Supermarket Sweep strategy/who would be better at the final round).