Supermarkets managing to reduce food waste figures

Food waste by Dutch supermarkets continued to decline last year. This is evident from the annual research by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) commissioned by the Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling foundation and the Centraal Bureau Levensmiddelenhandel (CBL) trade association. Of the total supermarket purchases, 0.89 percent did not reach consumers last year. That percentage was still above 1 percent in 2022.

The supermarket sector has been mapping food waste since 2018. Compared to that year, waste has decreased by 35 percent, according to the WUR. Bread, pre-baked bread, and pastries are still the category where the most waste occurs. Of the products in this group, 6.5 percent failed to reach the consumer last year. Nevertheless, waste within this category has already decreased considerably, according to the WUR, by 16 percent compared to 2022. For example, supermarkets have been focusing on selling off bread for some time now, by selling loaves of bread from the day before at a discount.

According to the WUR, supermarkets have also taken measures to prevent the waste of fresh meat and fresh fish. Of the products in this group, 1.4 percent ultimately did not reach the consumer last year. According to the researchers, supermarkets are now paying a lot of attention to better managing their stock when it comes to meat and fish. In doing so, the sector managed to reduce losses by 37 percent compared to 2022.

"Supermarkets are fully committed to innovations in the field of reducing food waste," explains general manager Marc Jansen of the CBL. This includes working with artificial intelligence (AI), for example, to match supply and demand. "But new products for supermarkets' own brands are also being developed based on residual flows, such as pasta sauce from leftover tomatoes or cookies and cake from leftover bananas."

The research was presented to Minister Femke Wiersma of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security, and Nature on Thursday. "I am happy to see that there is less and less food waste in retail," she said. "Our farmers, fishermen, and gardeners work incredibly hard every day to get the highest quality food on our plates. Every kilo that we throw away unnecessarily is one too many."