Buying Up Britain - supermarket operations - Industry Overview

Ecologist, The, Nov, 2000 by George Monbiot

The government recognises that all of us are paying for the superstores' free parking, and in 1997 the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) quietly resolved to do something about this. John Prescott planned to include a tax on out-of-town parking in his white paper on integrated transport. Lawson Lucas Mendelsohn, a lobbying company whose directors all worked for the Labour Party in opposition, warned Tesco that the tax was being considered, more than a year before the white paper was published. [12] Tesco began lobbying. In February 1998, it also made a [pound]12 million donation to the Millennium Dome. While Tesco denies that this was part of a deal with the government, the gift must have done its relationship with Labour no harm. In May 1998, Tesco representatives met John Prescott. [13] His white paper, which was due to appear imminently, was delayed. By the time it was published, in July of that year, the parking tax proposal had been dropped. Instead the paper called for 'a close r partnership' between local authorities and major retailers to 'identify appropriate measures funded by the private sector to reduce car dependency for access to these developments.' [14] Central government, in other words, would take no action, while contributions from the superstores would remain voluntary.

Supermarkets are similarly adept at making society pay their costs of distribution. The big chains are reluctant to hold much stock, as storage is expensive. Instead they encourage the farms and food manufacturers which supply them to store the produce on their behalf, and operate a 'just-in-time' delivery system. 'This', John Breach, head of the British Independent Fruit Growers' Association, observes, 'frequently leads to very environmentally unfriendly, refrigerated juggernauts visiting farms daily, often collecting just a few pallets of produce.' [15]

The superstores' buying power, their demands for standardised, easily gradable produce and their centralised distribution systems have resulted in a profligate use of transport. Out-of-season Coxes are imported 14,000 miles from New Zealand during our own apple season, while our produce lies rotting on the ground. In France, 90 per cent of the apples sold in supermarkets are produced domestically. In the UK, the figure is just 25 per cent. [16] A study by the environmental organisation The Safe Alliance found that some of the vegetables being sold in two superstores on the outskirts of Evesham in Worcestershire had been grown just one mile from the town, but before they reached the shelves they had been trucked first to Hereford, then to Dyfed, then to a distribution depot in Manchester, from which they were delivered back to Evesham. The same report noted that all Safeway's dairy produce passes through a single depot in Warwickshire, before being trucked all over the country. [17]

Sainsbury, Safeway, Tesco Distribution, Asda and Marks and Spencer all are or have recently been members of the Freight Transport Association, the lobby group representing the interests of road hauliers. It campaigns against restrictions on lorries travelling through residential areas at night, against constraints on the size of lorries and for increases in the speed limit for large lorries on small country roads. [18]