ABSTRACT
The concept of food miles, like carbon dioxide intensity, is ‘one figure captures all’ metric that attempts to highlight how globalized and remote our food sourcing has become. Supermarket food chain consolidation has lengthened food miles. Reducing ‘visible’ water usage frequently features prominently on supermarket corporate social responsibility websites. Supermarkets’ initiatives on environment tend to focus on ‘efficiency’ rather than ‘sustainability’. Deforestation, the destruction of large swathes of the world’s tropical rainforests for commercial purposes, is an environmental threat that has been in the public arena for many years. Supermarkets have been considerable users of plastic in other areas besides single-use bags. Much of their food is sold already contained in some form of plastic container. Effective food packaging has great potential to reduce food waste in less-developed countries, where most of the food waste occurs due to poor transport conditions, before the food reaches the retailer.
