Ever noticed how buzzwords become cliché after a year or two? At the moment, we seem to have an awful lot of them circling the planet, as testament to the surging global commitment to nurture and protect personal health, as well as our natural resources and environment. Whether we’re talking produce quality, the manner of production, packaging and transportation, or the commerce and trade of goods, everyone is on the bandwagon of food miles, carbon footprints, global sustainability, and being clean, green and eco-friendly.

Wholesale markets have not been left behind in the face of all this increased environmental concern, and why should they be? Some years ago we surveyed our member markets and learnt that they were globally marketing around 33 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables annually. This represents a considerable percentage of the total consumed each year.

To date, wholesale market efforts towards environmental protection have mainly focused on waste management (especially recycling and the reduction of waste going to landfill), and energy savings through organised traffic flow. WUWM surveys were conducted in 2004 and 2006 to find out what our members were doing in both those areas. We learnt that European wholesale market members are managing waste that represents around 500,000t a year. The corresponding cost to those markets is estimated to be some €40m (£27m) a year, or between five and 10 per cent of the total annual turnover of a wholesale market authority. At that time, 70 per cent of our member markets already had, or were soon planning to have, a waste reduction programme to reduce or better organise waste collection and the disposal of waste generated on their market.

The same studies estimated that European wholesale (member) market waste was annually equivalent to a third of the total domestic waste of Paris - or about 55,000 to 60,000 truck loads in total. Some 43 per cent of waste collected was recycled by each market, in particular cardboard, wood and organic matter, but also plastics and polystyrene, used in fish markets. In terms of the amount incinerated, it was estimated that in burning 30 per cent of the collected waste (about 50,000-100,000t a year), wholesale markets annually produce some 20,000 MWh of electricity or 80,000 MWh of heating, sufficient to supply a city of 150,000 inhabitants. There are also an increasing number of markets introducing high-tech composting systems to handle their waste and transform it into a useful commodity.

Wholesale market authorities are buzzing with the opportunity to improve the environmental effectiveness of their markets, in particular through the reduction of energy requirements, limiting harmful environmental concerns, such as noise and traffic, facilitating effective sewage and water treatments, and reducing the landfill of waste. For sure, the current practices shall outlive the buzz - and for a good while longer.