Food waste campaigner and author Tristram Stuart has told MPs and Lords at a meeting in Westminster that supermarkets lack the financial incentive to reduce waste because they can pass on the costs to suppliers.
Stuart outlined what he described as the “problem of relationships between supermarkets and suppliers” in a meeting of the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group at London’s Portcullis House.
“People often say ‘well, hold on a sec, food waste is costing somebody money, why would anyone do it if they could avoid it?’,” he said. “Unfortunately, due to the way the supermarkets have disproportionate power in the supply chain, they can often cause their suppliers to waste food and their suppliers bear the cost of that waste.
“Therefore the company causing the waste has not got financial incentive to reduce it.”
Stuart said the establishment of the Groceries Supply Code of Practice was meant to transfer the bearing of risk from suppliers but argues it is “dysfunctional because nobody is enforcing it”.
He said: “I think there’s a great many practices that the supermar- kets assume that are totally inessential to their business model, which can be, and I think are being, eliminated. If you’re a supermarket and you turn up and you don’t want the potatoes [you ordered], instead of just saying you don’t want them, it’s possible to say ‘they don’t meet our cosmetic standards’.”
Stuart said the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill that is going through parliament would not be a panacea to the problem but could help stop some of these practices by incentivising them.
“If you create that incentive and essentially internalise the cost of waste production, it has potential to make a difference,” he said.
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