Actions and ambitions on World Food Day

Today, 16 October, is World Food Day, an annual awareness day led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger, and the event aims to put food waste, farming and diet into the spotlight worldwide.

Did you know that Musgrave was the first Irish business to sign up to the UN SDGs and one of the first companies to embed the goals into our sustainability strategy? As a business that feeds 1 in 3 people across the island of Ireland we have a responsibility to ensure that we promote healthy eating; that we work with our suppliers and retail partners to ensure our food is sourced responsibly; and that no food is wasted in our supply chain.

‘Taking Care of Our World’ is our sustainability strategy, bringing together all our ambitions and commitments under one framework. We believe that everyone has a responsibility to leave a positive impact on the world around them and to influence others to do likewise. This makes doing the right thing by the planet integral to doing the right thing for our people, our communities and our business.

At the start of this year Musgrave signed the Government’s Food Waste Charter, which is focused on a common approach to the issue of food waste across the retail sector.

The Food Waste Charter aligns with our commitment to halving our food surplus by 2030 in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3. It also builds on our work to date and our ongoing commitment to ensuring that no food that is fit for human consumption is wasted, but is instead used to alleviate food poverty through our support for food re-distribution charities such as Foodcloud.

Musgrave MarketPlace Cork is just one of our brands that has joined forces with FoodCloud. The partnership will see surplus food from the branch go to local charities in Cork. Musgrave MarketPlace’s Dublin branches have been working with FoodCloud for the past two years and to date have donated 115 tonnes of fresh food – equating to over 250,000 meals with a value of €345,000 to charities such as The Simon Community.

We have also shared food waste reduction guidelines with the more than 1,400 independent retail partners that operate our SuperValu, Centra and Daybreak brands in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Spain. We will continue to provide consumers with information on how to reduce food waste in their homes.

Find out more about our commitments to health, food sourcing and food waste here, on our sustainability pages.

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