ONE of the world’s largest dairy companies is working on fixing its weakest link in pursuit of minimising waste across its whole supply chain – and consumers are in its sights.
Danish shoppers are estimated to waste as much as 20 per cent of the food they buy, throwing out up to 76 kilograms of food per person each year.
Australian food waste statistics are even worse, with each person throwing out the equivalent of 145kg of food every year, or $5 billion worth.
In a major drive to reduce its own emissions at factories and along its supply lines, Denmark’s Arla co-operative is looking hard at how it can curtail its own waste and change consumer habits at the same time.
As the co-op owns the whole supply chain, it reasons its environmental targets are easier to control than those of some of its competitors.
The developed world’s food waste problem is frustrating for farmers and food processing companies trying to be cleaner and greener right along the food chain, which is why these statistics are now the focus of increasing attention in Denmark.
Arla co-op, owned by more than 7500 Danish and Swedish farmers, has been improving its environmental credentials for many years according to corporate environmental manager, Jans Johannesen.
The company is now the world’s biggest organic producer of dairy products.
Reducing carbon emissions across the company by 350,000 tonnes or 25pc before 2013 is now one of Arla’s top five priorities.
There’s been a 10pc reduction since 2005, thanks to efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, reduced packaging waste and investment in research to help farmers drive down methane emissions.
Arla co-operative’s farmers were also striving to reduce their greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions for every litre of milk they delivered.
They pruned their farm carbon footprint by more than 20pc between 1990 and 2005.
But Mr Johannesen said Arla’s environmental approach needed to stretch across the value chain.
“At a time when farmers have done so much to use everything they have and reduce their waste, it’s important to get the message out to consumers that they have to do their part,” he said.
A new video on the Arla website has become a Danish hit, teaching customers to cook all the food they have in their fridge before they next go shopping.
“We’ve even tried to develop programs where your fridge can communicate with the mobile phone while you’re doing a grocery run and it advises what you have left and don’t need to buy,” Mr Johannesen said.
“That’s being developed right now and being put to an experiment – we want the intelligent refrigerator.
“We think there could also be a text service where you text the company number with details of your leftovers, and it will send a suggestion back of what to do with those products.
“Of course when we are looking at environmental targets we start in the core area of processing, but we are now setting up targets across the whole chain.
“It’s easy to do when you’re a co-op because you own the whole chain and have more control over the targets.
“But consumer waste is now around 20pc of all food and it is important to work with consumers and come up with more information about how big the waste impact is.”
Mr Johannesen said the company was also investing in new technology to cut wastage.
“Packaging to get all the food out of the containers so they leave nothing behind and new product sizes so people can buy smaller amounts have been developed," he said.
The co-op was trying to re-educate supermarket staff and customers to ensure they did not order more than they could sell or eat.
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