Let’s open this column with some stats: there are 33 million vehicles travelling on the UK roads today, and 2m (net) new vehicles on UK roads every year. We in foodservice have to be bold enough to admit that we are playing a huge part in this.

We have to stand up and say that we are being somewhat hypocritical. We all state that we are buying locally and as close to the source as possible, but what we are failing to address is how efficient those vehicles are that deliver the ‘local’ product through the supply chain. We are wasting many vehicles, without delivering any product, and producing pallets of air.

The foodservice sector has to look at how it might better this scenario. We know suppliers in our industry will always make mistakes. We have poured significant investment into great technology to reduce the issues, but at the end of the day we are employing people and we are delivering a product that is dying from the moment it’s picked - mistakes will happen. But when we make a mistake, we put three boxes in a large vehicle and send it any distance down the road to put it right, as the customer’s satisfaction is, rightly, our priority. There is no easy answer, but we have to look at alternatives. I suspect if we could calculate the impossible and look at how many kilometres foodservice firms (including all suppliers to pubs, restaurants, hotels, etc) drive, or rather waste, each year, it would be staggering.

This is all very well, but what can we do? In the future, we need to be looking at working with customers to reduce the number of deliveries per week. We need to work with the larger groups of customers to split their estates into Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, instead of daily deliveries. An immediate way to make a difference would be to work on the real efficiencies of second and third deliveries. We need to extend delivery times so we can fully load every vehicle leaving the depot. Working with other suppliers in different categories allows us to backhaul vehicles and supply more than fresh produce on a single run.

These are only our ideas, but when companies are sitting down to look at strategic efficiencies in their business, they also have to consider those of their customers, as they are more than a contributory factor. We have to act now or, in the next five years, putting vehicles on the road may no longer be a viable transport option. Sometimes in business it is about everyone collectively looking at a problem and breaking it down together. Can foodservice not lead by example, so other categories in the sector are encouraged by our success in reducing our carbon footprint?

Try this simple calculation - take a picture of every one of your vehicles before it leaves the depot for a seven-day period, work out how much space has been left on each vehicle and turn that into pallets of air. Multiply those pallets over a week, a month and a year, and sadly what will make us act is the reality that each one of those pallets of air represents lost profit.