Tips For Supermarkets To Prevent Food Waste!

Here are some tips for food stores from other food stores to prevent food waste. Most of these ideas were spotted at HiSbe (short for How It Should Be) in Brighton. They put "happiness before profits" and they are "on a mission to break the mould, by putting customers, suppliers and employees first".

1. Give older vegetables away as pet food
Are fruits and vegetables not so fresh anymore? Then give them away as 'pet food'!

2. Discount
If products have come close to or have gone past the expiry date (or no longer look their best), they are usually still quite tasty and safe for consumption. So you could inform your customers and sell them with a discount in a separate section.

3. Give away healthy snacks for kids!
Do you want to inspire younger generations to buy healthy food and care about the environment and each other? Give away free fruit to kids so that they can get a healthy snack while their parents stock up on local, organic, healthy foods. Bananas are great giveaways because they often end up being thrown out when they get (overly) ripe. But this is also when they are most tasty! So that is when they would be perfect as a healthy eat-while-you-shop snack.

4. Donate
What if you don't have time to come up with all these ideas? Or if there is just too much food that still goes to waste, even after implementing all these ideas? What if you simply don't have the resources to sort out all the stuff? Then it may be easier to get rid of everything in one go. So another option then is to donate to organizations who are willing to sort out edible foods and re-distribute it to people and/or animals in need.
Here in Trondheim we have several organizations that accept food donations: Salvation Army / Hveita Dagsenter, Folkekjøkken, Gryta aktivitetssenter, Brygga, Vår Frue Kirke, Birgitta Klosteret, Trondheim Frikirke, Veiskillet Treffsted and Stavne Dagsverk. All it requires is some committed and reliable volunteers who can help distribute the food. Wait for them to show up or recruit them from a volunteer database, university campus (especially if their topic is related to the environment) or through related pages on social media. Large farms are also usually happy to receive food donations, as they can use most of it to feed the animals.
Donating food is the easiest and most efficient way to deal with food waste! It saves time, it saves money (as there is less waste to be collected), it benefits the environment and it benefits many people and/or animals.