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Food Waste

Food Waste

Food waste is an urgent environmental and social issue. We have committed to reduce food waste by 20% by 2025, and halve it by 2030 (relative to 2017 baseline), in line with the Courtauld 2030 and UN SDG Champions 12.3 commitments. This goal has vital importance to reduce the environmental impact of wasted food, and to help alleviate food poverty.

To achieve these commitments we are working hard to prevent waste in our operations where possible, and when waste does happen, to ensure we have partnerships to distribute surplus food to charities. We also work with our suppliers to minimise waste and we support a range of industry initiatives.

We support  WRAP’s UK Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, an industry-wide programme that guides businesses to target, measure and act upon food waste. It aims to achieve a 50% reduction in food waste in the UK by 2030.

Reporting

  • We have reduced our wastage intensity by 67.22% since 2017, when we first published our data  (please see our full reporting methodology for years pertaining to 2017-2021  here, 2022  here  and 2023  here).
  

Operational

  • We offer up to 75% price reductions on fresh produce, bakery and chilled products that are near the end of their shelf life to reduce wastage. Additionally, we mark items off by 30% that have imperfect outer packaging.
  • We have been working in partnership with Neighbourly since 2019 and have linked all our stores with local groups to donate surplus fruit and vegetables, bakery, long-life products and flowers.  
  • Aldi has been in partnership with Too Good To Go since February 2023 and has sold over 500,000 Magic Bags. Too Good To Go helps further reduce our food waste and increase our value offering for our customers.
  • In 2022, we cut food waste within our operations by 57% since 2017, meaning we have hit our 2030 target eight years early. In light of this, we revised the target and are aiming to reduce food waste by 90% by 2030 against a 2017 baseline.

Consumer

  • We have removed best before dates from over 94 fresh fruit and vegetable lines, including apples and pears, citrus fruits, potatoes, carrots, root vegetables, garlic, and onions.
  • Find out how much Aldi has donated to charities, and the community groups your local store donates to  here.
  • We help our customers to reduce food waste by promoting WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign in stores, on social media, in our in-store leaflets and suggesting food waste saving tips to our customers.
  • Aldi has supported WRAP’s Food Waste Action Week every year since 2021 to raise awareness of consumer waste and the links to climate change through Aldi’s various channels -i.e. in Store magazine, website, social media channels and in store digital screens. Aldi also raises awareness with colleagues with internal news articles and competitions.

Supply Chain

  • We support our growers to reduce waste by flexing agreements to accommodate crop failures and gluts, such as introducing larger pack sizes for a limited time.
  • In 2021 Aldi conducted its first Whole Chain Plan, mapping waste from farm to fork at one of its potato suppliers. The learnings from the Whole Chain Plan are being used to extend the shelf life of the product through investigating improvements in packaging design.
  • We have supported our suppliers via our partnership with The Company Shop Group, to save 11,608 tonnes of surplus food (2015-2023) that would have been wasted. This equates to 27,639,746 meals. In December 2023 Aldi donated c.2,000 free Christmas dinners through its partnership with Company Shop.
  • In 2023 we rolled out a new process to facilitate suppliers redistributing quality control rejections from our Regional Distribution Centres. In the first year we were able to donate over 1,000 tonnes to The Company Shop Group. This equates to 2.5M meals. Suppliers can also now redistribute Aldi branded surplus through The Bread and Butter Thing and FareShare in addition to our longstanding partnership with Company Shop Group.
  • The Bread and Butter Thing is a charity supporting over 6,600 members and regularly redistribute more than 250,000 meals per week. The Bread and Butter Thing collect from field and farms, orchards, manufacturing sites, RDC’s and wholesalers.
  • FareShare is a charity supplying over 8,500 frontline charities across the UK. FareShare takes good-to-eat surplus food, which is unsold or unwanted by the food industry, and redistributes it through a network of over 1 million beneficiaries. FareShare collects surplus from all stages of the supply chain: growers, packers, manufacturers, retail DC's, wholesalers, stores, and third-party logistics.
  • We also still have our great partnership with Company Shop Group, the UK’s largest redistributor of surplus food and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) to its members. Company Shop works with Britain’s biggest retailers, manufacturers and brands to ensure that wholesome, surplus food and good quality FMCG reaches the people who need it most through redistribution via two channels: Company Shop and Community Shop.
  • Our partners can accept the following types of food:
  • Ambient and produce past its Best Before date (working to Wrap guidelines)
  • Short dated chill and use-by products (in some cases up to 24 hours before use)
  • Frozen product (in some cases up to six months past its Best Before)
  • Farm and field: Outgrades, grade 2-3 produce, partial rot, pitting, blemishes
  • Factory: Bulk, WIP, mislabelled products, meat ends, incorrect weight, products with quality issues
  • We encourage suppliers to reach out to the above organisations to discuss how they can support you with a surplus challenge.

Aldi has partnered with Neighbourly to donate surplus food from our stores across England, Scotland and Wales, helping to support the communities where we operate.

* Based on a conversion factor of 1 tonne = 0.00042 meals

Steve Butterworth, Neighbourly CEO:

"We are delighted to be partnering with Aldi on this programme and to help them realise their ambition to benefit those communities local to each and every one of their stores across the UK.  

"Food waste is a challenge Aldi is committed to playing its part of address. This approach is critical to ensure surplus food finds its way easily to the good causes supporting these communities that needs it most."

Catherine David, Director of Collaboration & Change WRAP:

"Aldi continues to be a very active member of the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap and Courtauld Commitment 2030. The company set itself a goal to halve food waste by 2030 in line with UN SDG Champions 12.3 commitments, and WRAP's programme. Aldi continues to tackle the immense environmental issue of food waste through its own operations and supplier networks - championing a Target-Measure-Act approach to food waste, whilst ensuring its commitment to redistributing any surplus food to charities continues. Using our Love Hate Food Waste resources, and supporting the annual Food Waste Action Week, shows its customers that Aldi is also determined to help them reduce household food waste. A key step Aldi has taken this year is the removal of best before date in its fresh produce aisles, giving customers more freedom to use their judgement of when food is still good to eat. In these and many other ways, Aldi is demonstrating a broad approach to the issue of food waste that is essential if we are to address this huge environmental problem."

Food Waste Data

Our food waste report includes data from all stores and regional distribution centres in the UK. In 2017, we established our food waste intensity baseline as being 1.16%, meaning 1.16% of sales ended up as waste (please refer to our full reporting methodology for the UK for years pertaining to 2017-2021  here, 2022  here  and 2023  here).

Since 2017, our food waste intensity has improved year-on-year, and in 2023, 0.38% of our food handled ended up as food waste.

We have also reduced our overall food waste in our operations by c. 67% from 2017 to 2023 (Please click  here  for further details on reporting methodology for years 2017-2021,  here  for 2022 and  here  for 2023).

  

Food surplus by destination

*TGTG since 2023 only

  

Independent Limited Assurance – Deloitte LLP

Deloitte LLP has been engaged to provide independent assurance over the food waste intensity metric using the symbol Δ in accordance with the International Standard for Assurance Engagements 3000 (“ISAE 3000”). Deloitte’s unqualified assurance opinion, which includes details of the selected information assured, can be found for years pertaining to 2017-2021  here, unqualified opinion for 2022  here  and qualified opinion for 2023  here.

The level of qualified assurance provided for a limited assurance engagement is substantially lower than a reasonable assurance engagement. In order to reach their opinion, Deloitte LLP performed a range of procedures. A summary of the work Deloitte LLP performed is included within their assurance statement.