Scaling up the 10x20x30 Initiative

Food loss and waste is a global issue with environmental, social and financial impacts. Around 1/3 of food produced for human consumption being lost or wasted globally, and if not tackled early on in the chain, food loss and waste will create major problems to the environment, and deprive people in need of this food. Ahold Delhaize brands are working hard to reduce food waste, both inside their own operations and across the supply chain, together with customers and suppliers.

Our “Grounded in Goodness” strategy is centered around our belief that what is healthy and sustainable should be accessible and available to all. With a dual focus on healthier people and a healthier planet, our strategy is based on the idea that these two things are intrinsically linked.

Acting responsibly today is imperative to securing a better tomorrow for generations to come. This approach ensures the decisions we make are grounded in doing the right thing for people – with a focus on customers, products, communities and associates – and planet – with a focus on impact from our own operations and working with farmers and suppliers to reduce the impact across the entire supply chain.

We recognise that food loss and waste is a systemic issue which requires the participation of all the players across the food value chain in order to achieve SDG 12.3. Our own objective is to halve food waste within our own operations by 2030 compared to a 2016 baseline.

In addition to our own operations, we see upstream food loss as the next frontier in eliminating wasted food. The further along the chain the food loss occurs, the more carbon intensive the wastage. If we turn that around and tackle food loss as early as possible, the less carbon emissions are associated with it. By reducing the amount of food waste at the source and donating surplus products to food banks, we can reduce our environmental impact while creating a positive social impact.

In 2019, Ahold Delhaize became a founding partner of the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) 10x20x30 initiative. The initiative brings together 10+ global food retailers who have each committed to engaging with 20 of their priority suppliers to halve their rates of food loss and waste by 2030. Ahold Delhaize brands have so far partnered with fourteen major suppliers to join WRI’s 10x20x30 initiative to root out food loss and waste in the food supply chain. These suppliers have committed to reduce food waste by 50% in their own operations by 2030. They will measure and publish their food waste inventory and create actionable food waste reduction strategies.

Our Greek brand Alfa Beta, conducted an 18-month study on food loss waste throughout its supply chain, back in 2019, together with Harokopio University in Athens, Greece, which helped Alfa Beta to set a baseline and measure food waste across the brand’s entire supply chain. It was the first time a Greek retailer had aimed to answer the question ‘How much food do we waste across our supply chain?’ Following that, in collaboration with their strategic partner WWF, Alfa Beta prepared an introductory booklet on food waste for suppliers, that was sent out to all its suppliers last year. In March 2023, Alfa Beta continued the journey to educate its suppliers, with an online webinar on food waste for suppliers (both own brand and national). Throughout the rest of 2023, Alfa Beta will organize dedicated workshops to deep dive into the issues and solutions for tackling food loss and waste and loss together with their suppliers.

Ahold Delhaize USA is participating in an upstream food loss project which aims to obtain better information about the amount of food left behind at the farm level to identify causes for food loss and interventions, set individual and national reduction targets and track progress. The project, launched in 2023, is a collaboration among CGF, WWF, WRAP and Anthesis. Thus far, seven members of CGF’s FWCoA are engaging their suppliers on beta trials of the Global Food Loss Metric Calculator Tool.

In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn collaborates with its suppliers to prevent food waste. Albert Heijn’s fruits and vegetable supplier, Bakker Barendrecht, supplies juice producer Hoogesteger with the residual flow of oranges. As soon as sales in the store go down or as soon as there are damages to the peel, Bakker Barendrecht supplies the oranges to Hoogesteger who uses them to produce juices.

Working with suppliers to jointly reduce food loss and waste can result in environmental, social and economic benefits, in addition to “not traversing the food loss and waste reduction journey alone”. This is part of the offer of the 10x20x30 initiative. The benefit is that by collaborating with suppliers, we achieve more. We as food retailers have the opportunity to connect partners and join forces, like the example from Albert Heijn were in 2020, 475,000 kilograms of oranges were saved from being wasted. We also have the opportunity to share best practices and give suppliers tools to accelerate their efforts, like the example from Alfa Beta.

Working on food waste from all parts of the supply chain is essential. As a retailer, it is vital to work upstream since it is in the crops where most food is lost. This phenomenon occurs because, in many cases, supermarkets have very high-quality standards that do not allow all products to be sold in our stores. At the same time, Colombia is not an industrialized country where nature is imperfect and, in some cases, is affected by climatic phenomena. Additionally, it can create significant supply chain disruptions, increase costs, and have negative environmental impacts.

To address this issue, we must work with our suppliers to develop more sustainable and resilient production systems. By developing suppliers, we can help improve their productivity, reduce food loss and waste, and create more sustainable supply chains. This can help ensure a reliable supply of products for our stores while supporting local communities’ economic development. In addition, by working closely with suppliers, we can identify and address issues early on, such as poor crop yields or quality issues, which can lead to food loss and waste.

As Grupo Exito, we have many concrete initiatives and projects to help suppliers address food loss and waste. One of our most successful programs is Reagro, a unique program in partnership with a food bank that seeks to give a second chance to foods that are not qualified for sale in supermarkets but are still fit for human consumption.

In addition, our stores have several formats that allow retail diversification and the quality of products that reach the stores, including hypermarkets, supermarkets, cash and carry, and convenience stores, which allow food to have different standards of quality, size, and appearance depending on the format. As a result, this initiative provides a greater opportunity to sell the entire crop and reduce food waste.

We also have initiatives like the “Mandarinaton,” “Yucaton,” and “Papaton” fairs, which are held in our stores when some food has a high season. These fairs allow us to buy large volumes of products to avoid waste and encourage consumers to buy them before they go to waste.

In addition to these alternatives, we have an inventory planning team that helps us in advance to know how much we will buy from the producer, so they know precisely how much they should plant and in what conditions. We also have a team of experts in the company’s business lines who constantly visit the crops and production centers to advise and promote good practices in the suppliers.

We have several initiatives and projects to help our suppliers address food loss and waste. These initiatives benefit our business and the wider community by supporting economic development and building a more sustainable future for Colombia. We remain committed to this process and will continue to work closely with our suppliers to achieve our goals.

As Grupo Exito, we are proud to share the results of our initiatives related to food waste with our suppliers. For example, through our Reagro program, we have avoided wasting more than 2,000 tons of food annually and impacted more than 147 thousand people. Additionally, our fairs, such as “Mandarinaton,” “Yucaton,” and “Papaton,” have been successful in reducing food waste by buying more than 6000 kilos of ñame, thousands of kilos of Mandarina, and so on.
Furthermore, working with our suppliers on upstream food loss and waste has several benefits:

• It helps us reduce food waste costs and better manage our inventory.
• It contributes to the sustainability of our business and the local community by reducing the environmental impact of food waste and providing opportunities for economic development.

• It allows us to build strong partnerships with our suppliers, which is critical to achieving our strategic goals and enhancing the quality of our products and services.

As outlined in our Integrated Report for 2022, we are committed to continue working with our suppliers to address food loss and waste and contribute to developing sustainable supply chains. This is a responsibility and an opportunity to create value for all stakeholders.

Food loss and waste is not only a country-specific, but a global, large-scale problem. With the world’s population growing rapidly and natural resources decreasing day by day, it is becoming more and more critical to act very quickly to support food production and responsible consumption through the efficient use of existing natural resources. Raw materials, water, soil, labor, and time are used in food production and all these resources are wasted as food goes to waste. Reducing food loss and waste has multifaceted benefits for both people and the planet we live on in terms of economy, environment, food security, climate change, biodiversity, water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural land use and cost reduction.

According to the UN Food Waste Index Report (2021), 931 million tons of food are lost every year. Food loss from farm to retail (upstream) is estimated at 50% on average each year. In other words, the product in the field becomes unconsumable before it even meets the consumer. On the other hand, according to FAO estimates, lost and wasted food could feed 1.26 billion people every year.

Our position as a retailer puts us at the center of the supply chain. In other words, at the back of our supply chain are our suppliers from whom we purchase products, and at the front are our customers to whom we sell products. As Migros supplies products from more than 2,000 active suppliers, we can penetrate a wide portfolio of producers and create great synergies together. In addition, with 77% of our turnover being agricultural products, we are committed to reducing upstream food waste and loss.

At Migros, we are aware that while we work to reduce our operational waste, we will further expand our impact by coming together with our suppliers from which we purchase products. This gives us the necessary motivation to collaborate with our suppliers.

In our ecosystem, which we have created together with our suppliers, producers, employees, and customers, we include all factors affecting climate change among our company’s main strategies and determine our road map. Our Sustainability approach, which we call Migros Better Future Plan, is at the core of our entire business. We know that every step taken with responsibility results in success. At Migros, we are aware of our liability to both society and the world. To this end, we also support our suppliers to reduce food waste.

In line with the United Nations Responsible Production and Consumption Goal 12, the target is to reduce food waste and losses by 50% by 2030. The 10x20x30 initiative, which was created with this goal in mind, means that 10 retailers around the world commit to and support their 20 suppliers to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. Launched in 2020 and monitored by the World Resources Institute (WRI), we were the first retailer from Türkiye to join this special initiative with 26 volunteer suppliers.

In the 10x20x30 project, which is entirely voluntary, our supplier companies can communicate with experts in this field at WRI, strengthen their own practices by seeing good practice examples, and communicate their participation in this initiative through press releases.

We organize trainings with WRI at least 4 times a year to reduce food waste and loss and provide training on how to reduce food waste within the framework of the ‘Food Loss and Waste Measurement and Reporting Standard (FLW Protocol)’. We provide informationand guidance on preparing food waste inventories and identifying mitigation strategies by measuring food waste, and act as a bridge in communication with WRI.

In addition to our suppliers, we also share our good practice examples with the participants through various events to raise awareness on food waste management in the Turkish food and retail sector, dissemination of the FLW Protocol and the 10x20x30 initiative.

With the contributions of leading companies in the retail and FMCG sectors, we spearheaded a study on consumer perceptions and behaviors leading to food loss, organized by the Food Safety
Association, and conducted by Nielsen. We participated in the Save Your Food campaign launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to raise public awareness on food waste. We also partner with ministries and leading experts to develop guidelines to reduce food loss and waste. For example, under the leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and with the support of FAO, we prepared the ‘Guide to Combating Food Waste at Food Points of Sale’ and put it at the service of the sector. Thus, by leading the Turkish Retail sector, we have made a lasting contribution to combat food loss and
waste.

To prevent post-harvest losses in the field, we have started to implement a model where the entire crop is used; we sell the products that meet our sales criteria, and we ensure that other products such as jams, sauces and fruit juice which retain nutritional value are used in other production areas.

We act with the awareness that local production is the foundation of both regional and national development. By developing a business model that prioritizes the sale of locally sourced products in the same region, we ensure that products are consumed in the geography where they are produced and contributed to the local economy. We prevent food losses based on logistics and reduce carbon emissions.

In line with the amendment to the Food Loss and Waste Protocol (FLW) standard, we have updated this target as the ratio of our food disposal tonnage to our food supply tonnage as of 2022. We recalculated our past data accordingly. Our food disposal rate, which was 5.09 in our base year, was 3.68 in 2022 and thus we achieved a 27.7% reduction in 4 years.

In 2022, to prevent post-harvest food loss, we carried out studies on all crops from the fields and analyzed those that do not meet the sales criteria in the production area. In these studies:

• We purchased 700 tons of apples from Antalya and Isparta regions, 90% of which will be sold in our stores and 10% to fruit juice companies.
• We purchased a total of 1,100 tons of kiwi in the Eastern Black Sea region. We support the continuity of kiwi production, which is grown as the second most important local source of livelihood in the Eastern Black Sea next to tea, through bulk purchases. We also purchased Rize mandarin oranges to be used in regional stores.

Finally, Migros participated in the ‘Upstream Food Loss Metric Tool’, a pilot study developed to measure Upstream FLW under the coordination of the CGF Food Waste CoA. By participating in this study with one supplier and 2 products, we will be measuring how much product is lost until it reaches retail. The first workshop of the project, which took place on April 18, will be followed by 3 more workshops. We believe that the good practices shared in these workshops will set an example for the processes of our suppliers.