Food Waste Management
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of the food produced in the world is discarded at roughly 1.3 billion tons. Food waste is not simply about wasting ingredients, it involves the loss of resources consumed during food production, including land, water, energy and labor, etc., which may also lead to food security problems. The decomposition of food waste in landfills also produces greenhouse gases. Therefore, the urgency of reducing food waste is self-evident.
As part of the retail industry, PCSC is closely intertwined with food. It has taken the responsibility in reducing food waste from three stages including “production,” “order shipment” and “retail.” In 2021, the Food Waste Reduction Task Force was set up under the Sustainable Development Committee. The task force reports the progress of the project to the Sustainable Development Committee regularly to demonstrate PCSC’s determination of reducing food waste.
Production
Reducing Food Waste from the Production of Fresh Food Products
PCSC reduces food waste from the factory production process through three major changes. First of all, production is now initiated upon order receipt instead of estimation to better control the production volume. The second reducing the waste of raw materials through the centralized production of various items. Last but not least, two adjustment of raw material estimates are performed prior to production to avoid excessive material in stock caused by weather changes or order fluctuations. The surplus after production is provided as employee meals. Finished and semi-finished products are also resold to employees to reduce food waste.
Order Shipment
Reducing Food Waste from Excessive Stock
PCSC has set up an AI order forecasting system at store end to reduce inventory and scrapped goods through placing accurate orders. The store end keeps the most suitable items on the shelves through monitoring the ones that are often scrapped because they don’t sell well each month. In addition, starting from August 2020, the ordering time for 4°C fresh prepared food was advanced to 12 hours before delivery. This allows fresh food factories to adjust supply and demand earlier and reduce food depletion to a minimum. In the meantime, in order to reduce food loss in the process of logistics and distribution, PCSC expects to extend the validity period of fresh food products in 2022. New technologies will be adopted to allow for the extension, such as the high-temperature sterilization equipment and special sealing film to reduce food waste.
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Retail
Reduce Food Waste from Scrapped Food
PCSC introduced the “iLove Food” program that takes advantage of the “smart labeling system” that was originally used for flagging expired products to prevent expiration. Besides managing the shelf life of food, this allows for better control over the “best before” time (8 hours prior to expiration). A 35% discount is given 8 hours prior to expiration (Note) on over 100 products. The “iLove Food Map” was also launched on the OPEN POINT APP in November 2021 to check on the stock as well as subscribing for product availability notifications. In the future, PCSC also plans outsource cleaning and transportation to certain stores, all of which will join the food waste recycling process.
Note: In May 2021, the original 30% discount was further reduced to 65% for better incentives.
PCSC will continue to manage the value chain, stay updated with factory production losses, the scrap rate of fresh food (the percentage of decline in the amount of food waste per NT$ million in revenue), the recovery rate of food waste in stores (the proportion of stores with food waste recycling) and other management indicators, in order to achieve the goal of halving food waste by 2030 and contributing to the mitigation of climate change.
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