英国乐购被指为降成本用快餐车运垃圾

Tesco is using its food delivery lorries to pick up rubbish from stores in an attempt to cut costs.

The UK's largest retailer has stopped using waste contractors to pick up and dispose of general rubbish, including unsold food, from its 600 largest supermarkets. Instead, bags of waste are piled into metal wheeled cages lined with clear plastic. These cages are picked up by the same trucks that deliver food to the stores once they have emptied their load. The trucks drop off the rubbish at a waste centre before returning to Tesco's distribution centres to pick up more groceries and food to start the cycle again.

A Tesco spokeswoman said the system, which does not involve the smaller vans that make home deliveries to customers, was more environmentally friendly. "We have recently introduced a new way of managing waste in some of our stores, which will remove 20,000 additional trips a year and reduce our carbon emissions by 4.5 tonnes a year."

The spokeswoman insisted there was no risk to food hygiene: "We have high standards of hygiene and food safety, and we require all vehicles to be inspected and cleared after every trip, with additional cleaning if required, alongside regular deep cleans."

However, notices posted at Tesco's recycling centre, seen by the Guardian, suggest only a quarter of the delivery fleet is sanitised or washed each week, although any driver is able to request a wash for his lorry if he feels it necessary.

One source close to the process said the thin plastic used to line the cages that transport bin bags was easily damaged so that liquid from putrefying rubbish could spill on to the floor of lorries. Meanwhile store staff sometimes did not have time to sort or wrap the rubbish adequately.

The source said there was not the time or resources to wash every trailer after each collection of general waste. With hundreds of Tesco stores around the country, some lorries can do several deliveries a day.

"I know they can't live up to the expectation of any reasonable customer," he said. "It's penny pinching and it's going to blow up because when it gets hot that smell is going to magnify 10-fold," said the source.

The source said, however, that food would never touch the floor of the delivery trailer because it is packaged and transported within wheeled cages.

Legally, all vehicles and containers used for transporting food must be kept clean and well-maintained to ensure food is not contaminated.

A spokesperson for the Food Standards Agency said: "The law is clear. where non-food products are carried there must be suitable cleaning before foods are carried. Receptacles or containers used to transport food cannot be used to transport anything else where this might lead to contamination."

It is not uncommon for supermarkets to transport dry waste, such as cardboard or plastic, from stores to recycling centres in empty grocery delivery lorries. The process is called backfilling and saves both money and fuel, so is seen as environmentally friendly.

Only one other supermarket – Sainsbury's – backfills with general waste and under its system bin bags are put into large plastic crates that are washed each time before reuse. A spokesperson said: "We never have waste or recyclate on board our delivery lorries at the same time as products for sale in our stores."

Marks & Spencer backfills its food trucks with food waste, but this is stored in specially designed large cardboard boxes lined with a heavy plastic.

Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose all said they never transport general waste in their food lorries.

Neal Austin, Morrisons' logistics and supply chain director, said: "Technically, we would have a concern about the risk of contamination given the closed environment within the trailers. More importantly, we don't believe our customers would feel comfortable knowing that the fresh food they were eating had been delivered in a lorry that a few hours earlier had been carrying waste food products."

查看译文

据英国《卫报》报道，英国零售连锁公司乐购

这家英国最大的零售商不再使用垃圾承包商从其600家大型超市里收取和处理日常垃圾

乐购的一名女发言人称，这个制度不会使用给消费者送货上门的小货车，更为环保。“近来，我们在一些商店中使用了一种处理垃圾的新方法，每年会减少两万次额外运输、减少4.5吨碳排放量。”

她坚称，食品卫生不会受到影响，“我们有很高的食品卫生和安全标准，而且规定每次运输后，所有的货车都要进行检查和清洗。如果需要，还会进行额外清理，并会定期彻底清理。”

但是，《卫报》从乐购回收中心里张贴的通知上看到，每周只有四分之一的货车经过了消毒或清洗，尽管司机在觉得有必要时可以要求清洗。

据知情人士透露，捆绑运送垃圾袋的笼子用的塑料胶条很薄，容易损坏，因此，腐烂的垃圾中的液体会洒在车厢里。同时，商店工作人员有时没有时间能充分地分类或打包垃圾。

该知情人士称，每次收集垃圾后，没有时间和物力去清洗每辆车。英国有数百家乐购商店，有些货车一天能运送好几次货物。

“我知道他们不能达到顾客的合理期待。”他说，“这样做很小气，而且会臭不可闻，因为当天热的时候，臭味会增加十倍。”

不过，该知情人士称，食物不会碰到车厢地板，因为它们是包裹起来并装在带有轮子的笼子里的。

根据法律规定，所有运输食物的车辆和容器都必须保持清洁和完好，以确保食物不受污染。

英国食品标准署的发言人说：“法律是明确的。在运送非食品货物之后，要进行适当清理，才能继续运送食物。运送食物的容器不能用来运送其他任何东西，否则会造成食品污染。”

超市用空货车把干燥的垃圾

只有一家超市，塞恩斯伯里超市

马莎百货

阿斯达

莫里森公司