Channel Islands Co-op has helped residents of Jersey reduce household food waste in a tie-up with the app Kitche.
During a nine-month campaign to February, the Co-op society encouraged shoppers to download the food waste app, which monitors users’ purchases, including best-before dates, and offers relevant recipes to help them get the most from their shopping.
The campaign, backed by in-store signage and local press advertising, resulted in 2% of Jersey households downloading Kitche.
Users reported wasting 2.6% of their food in the project, compared with a national average of 16% (Wrap, November 2023).
Kitche said the results highlighted the tech’s effectiveness in promoting behavioural change and hoped it “stood as a model” for other retailers to address home food waste.
The initiative also looked into the most wasted products at home, with salad leaves and lettuce taking the top spot. This was followed by strawberries, eggs, chickpeas, spinach, beef, onions, red peppers, bread and carrots.
“We partnered with Kitche and the government of Jersey as we want to help our retail customers reduce food waste at home, knowing the majority care about this topic but find it hard to solve,” said Channel Islands Co-op CEO Mark Cox.
“During a time when annual home food waste increased by 13% per person in recent years (according to Wrap), we felt an urgency to tackle this issue as a retailer. Over the past nine months of working together, we’ve seen a significant number of citizens engage with the Kitche app and we’ve gained actionable insights into food waste that we can address in-store.
“We learned that cooked meat products were wasted more than expected, along with more typically wasted products like bread and fruit/veg. We will use these valuable insights to support our plans to reduce food waste.”
Kitche co-founder and co-CEO Alex Vlassopulos added: “It’s been rewarding to work with CI Co-op to show how a holistic approach to tackling home food waste is necessary, and more importantly, works. We saw a reduction in waste from those engaged with the Kitche app.
“We also surfaced helpful unexpected insights on food products wasted, with CI Co-op interested in taking forward in future comms and interventions. Kitche provides retailers with real and live data to measure food waste that happens within the home, allowing them to learn and iterate food waste strategies accordingly.”
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