Bidfood has reduced the quantity of food waste sent to landfill by 92% over the past six years.
The wholesaler went from 54 tonnes sent to landfill in 2018 to 4.3 tonnes last year, according to its latest sustainability report covering the year to June 2024.
The result is part of Bidfood’s medium-term goal to cut all food waste by 63% between 2020 and 2030.
According to Bidfood’s head of sustainability Julie Owst, the wholesale giant achieved the result last year thanks to optimising redistribution, including collaborating with charity partners, improving forecasting with technology, and reducing damage in the warehouse by increasing staff training on fresh produce handling.
“Damage is one of the key drivers of waste, so we are looking closely at our own handling and storage processes. We are also working with our suppliers to improve their product packaging and reducing the amount of products we split from the outer case, so that we retain more of the secondary packaging, which in turn helps reducing the damage,” explained Owst.
One of the goals for 2025 is to implement a new demand planning system called Slim4, which will help reduce waste by optimising forecasting at the source.
The wholesaler redistributed 22% more food in tonnes than it did the year before, with FareShare being the “primary beneficiary” of redistribution, followed by local charities selected by individual depots.
As part of its journey towards net zero, the wholesaler is also aiming to reduce plastic packaging from the supply chain entirely.
Hand film usage dropped 50% between 2022 and 2024 company-wide, with Bidfood’s Nottingham depot using 0kg of plastic pallet wraps last year.
In January 2024, Bidfood introduced a new carbon footprint tool calculating the environmental impact of individual foods available for customers at menu planning stage.
“The response to the carbon footprint tool has been very positive in starting the dialogue with our suppliers and customers on carbon reduction,” said Owst.
“Collecting that data has delivered benefits that we didn’t originally anticipate. It’s helping us gather better data on product provenance and country of origin, but also mapping water risks and other environmental factors, so anything that improves the data about products in our supply chain helps us understand more about the risks more widely.”
Providing carbon data is an “increasing requirement” from customers, Owst added, many of whom are planning to add a traffic light labelling system to their menu.
The wholesaler has taken steps to decarbonise its fleet by using alternative fuels and technology, such as aerodyne kits, which reduced fuel consumption company-wide by 8%.
However, increasing its electric fleet – currently 0.06% of the total fleet – is “not a priority”, due to technical challenges such as refrigeration and vehicle capacity.
“It simply is not fit for purpose at the moment, due to the state of technology for foodservice vehicles of our size, mileage and the burden we put on them in our average working day,” said Owst.
“For example, we have an electric vehicle at Battersea. But because it’s so much heavier because of the electric battery, we had to remove the tail lift from the vehicle, and the weight limit has been a hindrance more than a sensible change,” said Owst.
“We remain committed to our medium-term goal to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 55% against a 2019 baseline.”
”Our long-term goal ambition is to have reduced absolute carbon emissions by at least 90% by 2045, with the residual offset, which is a science-based approach toward achieving net zero.”
No comments yet