The UK’s Daily Mail reports that the UK supermarket Tesco will monitor the healthiness of its customers’ food purchases using Clubcard data and then use that data to suggest ways in which people could make healthier choices. Although plans are still in the early stages options considered so far include offering vouchers for healthier products and promoting a better diet via suggested recipes. 

The UK consumer group Which? has released a report, “A taste for change,” which questions the effectiveness of voluntary industry-led initiatives such as the Responsibility Deal. 

The Courtauld Commitment is a voluntary “responsibility deal” aimed at improving resource efficiency and reducing the carbon and wider environmental impact of the grocery sector. This includes action to reduce food and packaging waste.  Signatories to the deal include UK grocery retailers and manufacturers, and the initiative is led and coordinated by the Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP). 

This paper starts with a summary of why food waste is an issue, from an environmental and economic perspective, reviews other developed country estimates of food waste losses, and then calculates the volume and economic value of retail and consumer stage food losses in the US, looking at this at an aggregate and individual consumer level (it doesn’t quantify environmental impacts). 

This report presents the results of a research exercise commissioned by WWF and conducted by Brook Lyndhurst during the latter part of 2011 and early part of 2012. The research was designed to investigate the business case for retailers to further support and promote sustainable diets.

The Cooperative reports on progress in meeting the targets set out a year ago in its 2011 Ethical Plan. 

In the FCRN newsletter of 9 February 2012 we reported on Tesco’s announcement, as covered by the Guardian and others, that it would no longer be putting carbon labels on its products.  However, since then Tesco has published a letter in the Grocer, clarifying its position.

The British Retail Consortium has published its annual environmental progress report.