That baker story is just awful!
And I do agree supermarkets should put their waste to good use. I also would like to see them recycle more instead of throwing so much plastic away.

However, items do get reduced for less. They get reduced three bloody times. Giving the staff something fun to do at the end of the night? You forget that we're at work, and as such, have things to do. There is barely time to do all my close down at the end of the night, you think I'd find it fun to know I have to somehow make time appear out of nowhere to do these extra "fun" activities of making sure all the food gets given away?

It would be far more sensible to have the waste collected as one and taken to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen.
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 11:37, 2 replies)

That does happen actually, I found out, some places like M&S will give owt they have left over that's still edible to such places,
but as a lot of these places come with strings attached (a bit of bible bashing or moralising about drugs and such) a lot of homeless folks don't like them.

But a well known pasty shop in York that also sold sarnies and such would reduce stuff to half price at 5pm and then in the last ten minutes as they were closing just walk out and pass out a few freebies to anyone who wanted them, and they seemed to enjoy it and it put a few smiles on folks' faces.
( ..wil, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 11:47, closed)

Freebies
I think there are still places that will do this. My old head of sixth form used to go and collect all the food from the bakery that hadn't sold at the end of the day and travel around the city giving it to the homeless.

I also used to be the person reducing the produce at the end of the day. It is still done in all of the supermarkets I live near. And not too much gets thrown out. But I guess there are still the few bits that do that can't get sold (because the shops would get their asses sued for selling out of date food) that could be put to better use. It just needs people to do it.

Out of interest, do you ask around food shops to see if they will let you give out their excess?
( El Lazarus is calm now, Ish,, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 15:49, closed)

Plastic
I don't know about other supermarkets, but I used to work for Sainsbury's and all of our plastic packaging would be recycled. We had a bailer for cardboard and another for plastic so it could be bound up and taken away. Which I always thought was rather good.
( El Lazarus is calm now, Ish,, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 15:44, closed)

I work a Morrisons...
... And we too have a cardboard and plastic bailer. The cardboard gets recycled, but it's the plastic that annoys me.

There's just so much of it! Sooooo much packaging, lined up the the ceilings, in boxes everywhere, that you just know people are going to chuck in the bin at home. It hardly seems like much at home but when I'm looking at it all it seems stupid. Also, we can't put any bits of food in the plastic bailer, or paper, obviously but that doesn't stop everyone from throwing all the plastic rubbish in the normal bin bags and just chucking it.
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 21:57, closed)