If you have a product that has passed its use by date, you are more than likely going to throw it in one of your coloured bins, depending where you live. But retail commercial properties have a degree of ethicality to abide by. This brings us to the question of what do supermarkets do with food that has passed either it’s ‘sell by’ or ‘use by’ dates?
“Over the last few years we have really explored lots of opportunities to reduce and dispose of our waste feed, linking up with local and national charities, such as FareShare to distribute our “in date” food to worthy causes throughout the UK.
“But latterly we have been concentrating on the food waste past its ‘best before’ date and hence not fit for human consumption, which until a few years ago all went to landfill,” a statement by Sainsbury’s said.
Supermarkets are very good at recycling packaging, with Sainsbury’s recycling around 160,000 tonnes of cardboard and plastic last year alone. But what about food waste?
Sainsbury’s collects all of the unsold food from all of their stores, including local commercial properties. The bread and bakery items are processed into feed for animals at farms across the UK. The packaged food is processed into renewable energy at anaerobic digesters, which are located in Staffordshire and Cumbernauld. The plant in Staffordshire is thought to be one of the biggest in the UK and processes around 120,000 tonnes of waste food every year. The energy produced at the plant is then used to provide power for about 10,000 homes.
The remaining waste from Sainsbury’s commercial properties is collected by Biffa for further recycling and if it cannot be broken down any more, it is turned into fuel. This has enabled local stores to ensure that none of their waste ends up in a landfill. Larger Sainsbury’s stores are also on target to achieve the same by the end of this year.
Do you recycle your waste food or does it end up in the black bin?
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