Miriam O'Reilly Speech from IBM Summit at Start 13/09/10

8/8/2019 Miriam O'Reilly Speech from IBM Summit at Start 13/09/10

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I was planning what to cook for dinner one day and decided on a leg of Welsh lamb.Since I live in rural Wales, in the heart of sheep rearing country, and it was June, Ididn’t think sourcing it would be too much of problem. But it was a Wednesday, half day closing at my local butchers, so I had to travel to my nearest supermarket.

On the way I passed fields teeming with sheep - they were grazing within 150 yardsof the supermarket door – but there was no Welsh lamb on sale inside – instead thefridge was heaving with lamb from New Zealand. I spoke to the manager who saidthis wasn’t unusual, they couldn’t get Welsh lamb, neither could their sister storenine miles away. He wanted to sell it, customers asked to buy it, but he didn’t haveany control over their supply chain, he had to take what he was given, and in themain that was New Zealand lamb.

That evening, as I tucked into my cheese omelette, I wondered at the sense of transporting lamb nearly twelve thousand miles, either as frozen carcasses or inchilled containers, to my supermarket in the wilds of Wales when there was plenty of lamb on the doorstep.

I realise the supply chain is complex, and there are established contractual,marketing, and distribution factors at play. Also, Welsh farmers can’t supply all year round - and customers want to eat lamb whatever the time of year. But although Iphoned the supermarket’s head office, and spoke to several people including their regional buyer, I was never able to get a satisfactory answer as to why, even at theheight of the season, they couldn’t supply Welsh lamb to a Welsh supermarket, butthey could bring it half way round the world.

We live in a global market, I accept that, but there are times when I think the supplychain simply defies logic; I’m delighted to be able to share my personal view of howwe could achieve a more sustainable supply chain.

Retailers are the gateways to consumers and I’m in awe – actually I’m staggered - atthe power they have, not just to shape what’s grown, processed and available for meto eat but to influence how I can live sustainably.

And I do try to live a sustainable life, and that includes choosing foods, goods, andservices from companies who operate sustainably – but often the green credentialsdon’t stretch the length and breadth of their own supply chain.

We’ve heard about the sustainability programmes large high profile companies havebuilt into their overall policies and targets as part of Corporate Social Responsibility –it’s good for a company’s reputation – and most – as is evident today - are workinghard to do the right thing. ‘Doing the right thing’ can raise real dilemmas for retailers -I’ve seen it for myself. Most of the cut flowers we buy in this country are imported.Even though they’re flown in from countries like Columbia or Kenya, it still uses lessenergy than growing them here in hothouses. So on the surface, this appears a more





green answers to this problem. I genuinely believe Manufacturers and retailers aregenuinely interested in finding a solution too, because it’ll save them money. Andagain there are tremendous initiatives out there. Renewable Energy recovery fromAnaerobic Digestion is encouraged and supported by government and the green

lobby, so it’s expected we’ll see a growth in anaerobic solutions around the countryin the next few years. But retailers appear to be pursuing individual solutions to ashared problem – why not collaborate. Perhaps some retailers see their improvement of waste management as a PR tool which gives them a marketingadvantage over others but by joining forces supermarkets could fund a wider anddeeper range of research than they can do on their own, and this sort of collaboration could engage the wider food supply chain. By pooling resources andsharing research the best environmental solution to waste could be reached in ashorter time.

I mentioned sharing research there, and this is something else I wanted to raisetoday. I’m sure most of you here are well aware of the Courtauld Commitment, thevoluntary agreement aimed at reducing the carbon and environmental impact of thegrocery retail sector, Courtauld 2 launched in March this year focuses on achieving amore sustainable use of resources over the entire lifecycle of products throughoutthe whole supply chain - reducing waste by 5 per cent by 2012. To help achieve thisin 2009, DHL, with Oakdene Hollins, the government and industry consultants,compiled a report for WRAP, investigating waste in the UK food and drink supplychain. Food manufacturing was of particular interest because there is enormouswaste in that sector at a huge cost to the UK economy. But researchers cameacross a big stumbling block. They had difficulty trying to compile an accurate pictureof the true amount of manufacturing food waste because a significant number of companies reported that they didn’t capture the waste data in sufficient detail. As aresult of the low response rate, DHL had to perform large extrapolations on thesample data in order to present it at a sector level, and had to heavily caveat theresults, which for 2008 was 6.6 million tonnes of food and drink manufacturingwaste. But if you don’t capture data accurately and with enough detail, how can youreally know how big the problem is that you are facing, or how to solve it.

I can only guess at the reasons why researchers weren’t able to get the dataneeded: it either didn’t exist, or maybe it did exist - but in too many places, or companies weren’t willing to share it. Basically if we are to achieve a sustainablesupply chain someone needs to grab 'environmental data' by the scruff of the neck tostandardise an industry approach. Collaboration is key.



We could learn a lot from the process developed by SEDEX, the Supplier EthicalData Exchange. This enables manufacturers, retailers and distributors to store andshare ethical trading data on a secure database. The same mechanism could bedeveloped for waste reporting. Companies themselves would maintain responsibility

for collecting the data and updating a template and, in much the same way as Sedexoperates, they could let other interested parties have access to their data (or not) asthey see fit. That way there wouldn’t be a need for their direct involvement in lots of different surveys. The added benefit to this is that the database would be controlledby an independent agency. Reporting would be more accurate, improvementmeasurement more meaningful and suggestions more effective in dealing with ashared problem - supply chain waste. By the way, I went into my local supermarketin Wales last Wednesday, and was able to buy Welsh lamb. There was only aboutsix or seven packs on sale, not as much I would have liked – but it’s a start.

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Miriam O'Reilly Speech from IBM Summit at Start 13/09/10