We serve meals to many millions of people through our restaurants, cafes and bistros each year and we´ve made reduction food waste a priority. We are working towards our target of a 50% reduction in production food waste1 by 31 December 2021 (from FY17). This contributes to the Inter IKEA target, that covers all IKEA stores across the entire franchise system, to reduce production food waste by 50% by the end of 2022. This target deadline was extended from the original goal of 31 August 2020. Our food waste initiative led to a 44.8% reduction in production food waste by the end of FY21 (from FY17).
Ingka Investments has a minority investment in Winnow, a UK company that has developed an innovative food waste tracking and analytics solution to reduce waste in commercial kitchens. We have now installed the system at 364 stores (94% of our total), up from 263 in FY20. It provides a smart weighting scale and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise and track what has been discarded. Daily reports enable our co-workers to identify sources of waste and make substantial savings.
We have also explored ways to recycle and reuse food waste, including on-site compost bins at nine sites. We are also working with Too Good To Go, a social impact organisation dedicated to fighting food waste worldwide. Their app prevents food waste by enabling people to buy surplus food from restaurants and food stores at a discounted price. In FY21, we regularly placed surplus food on the app across six of our markets (Norway, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium), helping to prevent more than 167,000 meals from being wasted.
To help our customers reduce food waste in their own kitchens, IKEA Canada launched a recipe book dedicated to cooking with the little things we usually throw away. The IKEA Scraps Book (which includes a free digital version) features 50 recipes created in collaboration with chefs across North America.