Special Report: Food Waste

According to the experts, there are four rules to cutting food waste: prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle. Prevention is best and Booths – which has 30 stores across Yorkshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and Cheshire – has several initiatives. There’s a rigorous reduce-to-clear policy on food nearing its use-by date; they bake bread fresh in stores so produce only what is needed; they have short supply chains and constant communication with suppliers. If a grower tells them this season’s pears, say, are going to be ‘less cosmetic’ than usual, they can plan to turn them into prepared fruit.

At the Ludlow Food Centre, Shropshire, which has eight production kitchens, a café, food hall and restaurant, waste prevention is down to planning. A spokesman says, “We order in relatively small batches to our warehouse and each department will plan their production. Our in-house recipe system means that for each batch of product we know exactly how much of each ingredient we’ll need.”

An innovative way to prevent waste is to stock products which themselves prevent waste. Selfridges and Benedicts deli in Whalley, Lancashire are among the many independents across the UK who stock Rubies in the Rubble chutneys made from fruit and veg that would otherwise be dumped. The success of this social enterprise is not only down to a good story; the recipes are delicious. I particularly enjoyed their slightly runny banana chutney which is a great match for curry.

There’s a rise in so-called conscious consumerism say trend-watchers, JWT Innovation, and look out for products made from discarded by-products of food production. In the States, a company is making artisanal vinegars from a by-product of brewing. If you stock products with a good story, shout about it on your website. 

Second rule: reduce. Audit how much you waste and why. Small changes make a big difference e.g. recalibrating ovens so burnt croissants aren’t thrown out, ordering meat in ready-cut portions so you waste less on trimmings, or serving fewer chips if customers aren’t finishing them. Get every staff member on-side and appoint a food waste champion to gather suggestions.

Third rule: reuse. Booths uses grade-out produce in prepared fruit products. Veg box suppliers, Riverford Organics, turn wonky, damaged and over-sized fruit and veg into meals for their farm restaurant, Islington pub and subsidised staff canteen. Staff take home grade-outs, with free strawberries most popular. Cattle also consume unsaleable produce. Riverford boss Guy Watson says, “Broccoli is their favourite but they are not so keen on oranges. We have to be careful, mind - beetroot makes their milk pink while garlic and onions taint the flavour.” At the Ludlow Food Centre, surplus strawberries go to their jam-makers and surplus meat from the butchery to the production kitchens.

Charlie Pears-Wallace at the Northumberland Cheese Company says, “Cheese off-cuts we can’t use as cooking cheese in the café become samples at farmers’ markets and for potential new customers.” Local charities will be grateful for food. Booths works with over 15 of them ranging from established food banks such as the Blackpool Food Partnership to community church groups and homeless associations. They freeze unsold bread in store for the groups to collect. Manager, Colin Porter, says, ‘Given that many of our stores are in rural locations, it’s important to work with local organisations.” They would like to work with more but reliability can be an issue. “It’s important to find reliable charities who’ll regularly turn up to collect the waste.”

Final rule: recycle. This should be a last resort. The Ludlow Food Centre’s orange peel, potato skins and eggshells are transformed into renewable energy. A local business, Lutra Ltd., collects them twice a week before feeding them through an anaerobic digester and converting them into biogas. The biogas heats Ludlow’s on-site digester and is also used towards a local district heating scheme as well as the company owner’s Aga oven.