The UK alone produces more than 170m tonnes of waste every year, much of it food packaging. While it has revolutionised the way we store and consume food, there is now so much of it that landfills can’t cope. Some of it is poisonous, and some of it never degrades. It can take 450 years for some types of plastic bottle to break down we never actually throw anything “away” – it’s really just put somewhere else.
It’s easy to despair at the scale of the task, but it isn’t beyond humanity to solve it. Food packaging ought to be a doddle and a few of our customers in the Grocery industry are already starting to make headway with good use of their BI platform.
WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) is a registered charity. It works with businesses, individuals and communities to achieve a circular ecomony through helping them reduce waste, develop sustainable products and use resources in an efficient way.
Their long-awaited 25 Year Environment Plan, released earlier this year, set out a raft of proposals on plastic waste in order to achieve the Plan’s headline commitment to eliminate ‘avoidable’ plastic waste by 2042.
In the grocery sector – through the Courtauld Commitment of 2015 and in its third phase, food and drink organisations are working together to reduce food, packaging and supply chain waste.
Signatories to the Courtauld Commitment include industry leaders such as Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda and big brands such as Unilever and Nestle have signed up and together agreed to:
Our customers are using their existing data to monitor their packaging waste through highly visual dashboards that are accessible across their wholesale market area in order to keep that information current, transparent and actionable.
Are you ready to save the world … or do you need our help too?