Knowledge decreases Food Waste

Key Benefits

Education is the foundation for making the world better. Reducing food waste is a responsibility for all of us, but retailers have the power to influence their supply chain partners and consumers. Why not use this power to make the world better? We propose an essential solution to cut waste to zero – Knowledge! The co-creation of the courses on our OpenLearn platform, with the potential development of a toolkit and a customer education App to inform practical solutions, will benefit M&S, M&S partners and consumers by taking knowledge to improve awareness of food waste and promoting a more sustainable future.

In the first phase of this project, we propose two OpenLearn courses:

a)    one customer-focused, providing general awareness of global and local food waste, its impacts in the short and long-term, and practical solutions to help them buy smartly and, consequently, reduce food waste in their homes. The course “A Sustainable Approach to Your Purchase” will be up to one-hour course, with animation, quizzes, and interactive and user-friendly exercises to engage customers. Strategies to better engage customers in this course will be further discussed with M&S experts, but it’s worth highlighting that OU holds the expertise in delivering knowledge to a range of students regardless of their age or needs. This, therefore, will help to address different M&S customer segments.

b)   a second course will focus on M&S employees and partners. The focus of the course will be customised to what M&S identifies as needs and value-added. This course (up to 4 hours) can cover key managerial and up-to-date content (such as Data Analytics, technology and Business Intelligence for the Food Supply Chain.) to take knowledge to M&S employees and partners, especially small companies and non-profit organisations that might lack skills to deal with food waste.

The courses aim to share not only the essential awareness that everyone must have regarding food waste but also teach best practices and solutions from the UK and the World alongside the benefits we can all have in reducing waste. Outcomes from these courses (with general data, such as attendance, location, and most visited section, that is provided monthly report) can even be disseminated by M&S in different ways (e.g., apps, recipes, school courses). By promoting knowledge along the end-to-end supply chain, M&S will make a great contribution to society and the environment.

Following that, we propose a second phase of this project (optional), which aims to develop a co-created toolkit (concise set of guidance) for M&S employees, partners and customers with best practices for reducing food waste. This toolkit is meant to be an easy guide (like an infographic) to summarise the key takeaways of the courses, and it could be complemented through findings from data collected through activities to explore new solutions and/or best practices.  

We also propose an optional third phase to co-develop a consumer education App with the aim of maintaining the engagement of customers with up-to-date ideas and solutions to reduce food waste, knowing that a great amount of waste is in the household. We believe this App can also increase customer loyalty and retention by developing the following ideas:

-       Smart recipes: in the App, customers can add the type of food they have in-house (e.g. onions, potatoes, tomatoes and eggs), and the App will provide suggestions of recipes for them to make use of all the food they have and avoid waste. Additionally, this can help them make smart decisions while shopping.

-       Smart offers: M&S can add suggestions for food combinations based on the high availability of fruits and vegetables, for instance, to promote sales of the available foods and guarantee they are sold fresh and with high quality.

-       Exploring the product: by taking a photo of a specific food (e.g. an apple), the App could inform the ripening process, how long it will take to go rotten, and how to postpone it. It could also add curiosity and key information about that product.

-       Communication: displaying up-to-date figures about global and local food waste and how M&S has been fighting against it. This will help spread the good practice in reducing food waste.

-       Connectivity: the App can help connect customers with local community organisations (perhaps to extend the Neighbourly connection), so consumers can support local communities with their needs by donating extra foods.

-       Rewards: by using the recipes, offers, and exploring functionalities of the App, customers might get some points or credits for the next purchase or run different types of rewards (to be discussed with M&S experts).

-       Feedback: the app can also help gather consumers’ ideas, solutions and critiques to keep improving the practices and reducing food waste.

These ideas are not exhaustive and could cover many other ideas provided by M&S, as well as could be extended to M&S partners.