Fighting food waste

Fighting food waste

Our belief

Reducing food waste is a societal, ethical and environmental issue that is growing in importance every day. It’s also a challenge for us at PAUL, where we sell what we produce on the day it’s produced, and must offer you a choice of products until the moment when our shops close at the end of the day.

In order to achieve the goal of reducing food waste, our first step is to prepare and bake our products throughout the day, as close as possible to the moment when they are sold. This allows us to offer our customers the very freshest products, but also enables us to avoid producing too much food on less busy days.

In spite of our best efforts, there are still some unsold products at the end of the day’s service. And as we sell mainly products that are baked and sold fresh daily, we have been stepping up our initiatives to reduce the volume and impact of any food waste.

Our initiatives

  • Offer our unsold fresh products at reduced prices via the Too Good to Go app in France (since 2019 )
  • Seek out partnerships with local or national charities to collect our unsold items from each store in the evening. (If your association or charity is interested, go to your local PAUL to ask about a partnership, or contact us to put you in touch with the right people to talk to)
  • Reduce food waste by, for example, trying out partnerships with companies specialising in the methanisation of organic waste – a process that produces energy from food waste

Our goals

  • To reduce food waste by 5% per year
  • To set up an alternative sales system such as Too Good to Go for 100% of our stores in France
  • To develop the donation of unsold products to charitable organisations

Our progress

  • 230 PAUL shops to date are partners of Too Good to Go in France
  • The 850,000 meals saved so far through this scheme equate to 2,100 tonnes of CO2 avoided