As one of the participants in the group shared, at a recent meeting on food waste, and the goal of zero waste, someone remarked to the CEO, "do you know that you can really afford zero waste - do you know what it will cost to get to the target?"

To answer the question, ECR have commissioned research into the true cost of Food Waste with Professor Lisa Jack of the University of Portsmouth, and building on her research with the group on the true cost of returns from online sales, and based on inputs from case study retailers, she introduced in this session the outputs from here literature review and an early draft of how the model will work, aiming to put a cost to the vast array of activities associated with managing the exit of surplus food.

The open discussion covered the extent to which this was going to be a relevant piece of research for the group to use in practice, the degree of specificity for the model and then the relationship between the model and agreed priorities on surplus food exit routes.

This session was part of the two day working group meeting for retailers, producers and academics only. To apply for a recording of this session or any of the others click apply.

May 19th - Budget and KPI management in food retailers, who owns it and how are they measured?

May 19th - Store Level Forecasting & Ordering - Retailer Case Study on the introduction of Machine Learning to Sell More and Waste Less

May 20th - Retailer Case Study - One retailers journey towards zero waste

May 20th - Smart Labels - The X5 business case

May 20th - Tesco and Olio - Introducing new ways to manage surplus food