Alcampo Boosts Fight Against Food Waste With ‘Happy Box’

The Happy Box is a key component of the ‘Alcampo y tú, sin desperdicio’ (‘Alcampo and you, without waste’) plan, which aims to combat food waste.

In its past fiscal year, Alcampo sold nearly 200,000 Happy Boxes, preventing over 620 tonnes of perfectly edible fruit and vegetables from being wasted, ESM Magazine reports.

This marks a significant increase from 2024, when 128,000 boxes were sold, saving approximately 400 tonnes of produce.

A Happy Box contains fruit and vegetables that are still perfectly good to eat, but may have minor aesthetic imperfections, such as irregular shapes, varying sizes, or slight surface blemishes.

These items, often from damaged packaging, maintain their nutritional properties and quality.

Varied, Useful Assortment

Each Happy Box is carefully curated by store teams in the fruit and vegetable sections, who select and package a balanced, varied and useful assortment for households, effectively giving foods that might otherwise go to waste a second chance.

The initiative is available in two sizes, to suit different store formats: a 5kg Happy Box priced at €2.99 in hypermarkets, and a 2kg version for €0.99 in supermarkets.

Initially piloted at the Alcampo hypermarket in Leganés, in the Community of Madrid, the Happy Box has been progressively rolled out across Alcampo’s entire network.

The retailer’s strategy to reduce waste involves every stage of the supply chain and includes employees, partners and customers, both through preventative measures and responsive actions.

Javier Bardés, director of Alcampo Leganés, commented, “Reducing food waste is now a core focus of our daily operations, with a plan in place in every store and supported by the entire network.

“The fact that this initiative originated in Leganés and has spread throughout the Alcampo network is an incentive to continue moving forward with the same determination and with an eye towards an ever-greater impact.”