Lagardère Travel Retail unveils FLOW Anti-Waste Program
Lagardère Travel Retail proudly announces the launch of its new anti-waste program, named FLOW, which stands for Fighting to Limit Our Waste. It is a comprehensive initiative designed to address the pressing environmental, economic, and ethical challenges surrounding food waste in the Travel Retail industry.
In line with its ongoing commitment to sustainability and waste reduction, Lagardère Travel Retail is expanding its efforts to reducing food waste not only in its Foodservice operations but also across Travel Essentials, and Duty Free & Fashion, by launching a global anti-waste program on a worldwide scale.
The FLOW Anti-Waste Program is rooted in the United Nations Food and Waste Reduction Program, Champions 12.3. This initiative, led by a coalition of executives and civil society, is dedicated to inspiring ambition, mobilizing action, and accelerating progress toward achieving SDG Target 12.3 by 2030. This target aims to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains by 2030.
At its core, the FLOW program seeks to fight waste by leveraging every possible success factor to reduce wastage, all while ensuring that the topic is accessible to all.
The FLOW Anti-Waste Program is built on five pillars: Measurement, Staff engagement, Anti-waste standard operating procedure, In-store promotions and Excess food management.
Mélanie Guilldou, EVP Foodservice and FLOW sponsor at Lagardère Travel Retail commented: "At Lagardère Travel Retail, we are committed to building a more sustainable Travel Retail environment. The FLOW Anti-Waste Program is a key initiative under our Corporate Social Responsibility PEPS roadmap, to address food waste and more globally to avoid, reduce and repurpose unsold products across the company’s operations."
To promote the program in-store, a visually compelling identity has been developed around the FLOW brand, emphasizing the importance of fighting waste and the notion of fluidity, vital for development with its tagline ‘Go with the FLOW, limit our waste & go’.
In recent years, before introducing the FLOW program, numerous initiatives have emerged within the Lagardère Travel Retail ecosystem to prevent food waste as much as possible. These include promotional offers organized at the end of the day. In France, the "Défi no Gaspi" initiative aims to better educate and inform customers, while applications have been used in several countries to facilitate the sale of products nearing expiration through discounted baskets. Another example is Poland, one of the seven countries where we partner with Too Good to Go. In addition to these initiatives, unsold items are donated to associations, either directly or through platforms that redistribute donations to NGOs such as Food Angels in Hong Kong, the Goodr Program in the US, or Last Minute Market in Italy.
Regarding the transformation of losses, several initiatives exist in different countries. For example, in the Czech Republic, an intelligent composter has been implemented to reduce the weight of trash and valorize it. The compost is then made available to customers for free along with instructions on its use. In the United Arab Emirates, teams have partnered with the startup "Bean and Beyond" to recover coffee grounds and produce mushrooms that are then used in recipes.
To share best practices among countries, a community of Chefs has been created, bringing together international chefs to promote anti-waste, vegan, and vegetarian recipes. The goal is to involve the chefs in concrete actions and to develop recipes to minimize our carbon footprint. Responsible recipes are made available to all countries through an online platform.
Today, all these initiatives continue to thrive and will be reinforced under the FLOW Anti-Waste Program umbrella, contributing to reducing the environmental impact of waste and offering the benefit of providing quality products that can be quickly consumed at a lower price while participating in a virtuous circle. This program is tailor made for Travel Retail and specifically to airports and the airside part of operations.
