Efficient Consumer Response Supply Chain Waste Prevention guide 2012

Type of practice Reduce

Name of practice Efficient Consumer Response Supply Chain Waste Prevention guide 2012

Name of main actor Efficient Consumer Response

Type of actor(s) Food services, Company

Location United States of America

Stage of implementation Processing, Retail

Year of implementation 2012

What was/is being done? Using the principles and tools from the Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) Supply Chain Waste Prevention guide 2012, Mark&Spencer (M&S) and Uniq, one of its key supplier, managed to dramatically reduce their food wastage. Uniq produced some 90 million of the 1.6 billion sandwiches bought on-the-go in the UK in 2010. Previous research has suggested that sandwiches have a high level of waste in excess of 5%. The short shelf-life of sandwiches, coupled with unpredictable demand from consumers due, for example, to the weather and other factors, can lead to high levels of waste. After having assessed the main areas of food waste, the team decided to: • review stock requirements at product group level, initially based on previous days sales and weather forecasts; • re-align orders for each group vs. planned estimate by reviewing waste, sell-outs and progressive sales; • use a newly developed commitment sheet to enter and review orders at line level; • re-align line level estimates and review against finalized order; • make amendment to finalized order as recommended by a new sheet. In addition, new routines were introduced, including regular meetings to discuss product performance, order fluctuation, manual amends, trends and future estimates and daily discussions between planners and M&S team around planned orders.

Outcomes and impacts As a result of the actions reported above, M&S and Uniq saved 129 tonnes of food waste in 2010 and expected to save a further 170 tonnes during 2011. By obtaining a fuller understanding of the contribution made by all sandwich lines and taking action together to review the range, both M&S and Uniq have seen a substantial reduction in their costs and significant environmental gains have been made. According to WRAP, in the UK every tonne of food waste avoided in this way is also worth 4.5 tonnes of avoided CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to the capita CO2 emission in Argentina (Institute of Grocery Distribution, 2013).