Environment Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness opposite. I support all these amendments; they are very simple, very short and very small, but they do actually fix a problem. I think the noble Baroness has every right to get cross. I am furious most of the time when I am speaking to the Government, because, for example, they have falsely claimed that they have achieved their CO₂ reduction targets, when in fact—when we look at this sort of behaviour: exporting plastic waste—we are exporting our CO₂. That is why the Government can falsely claim that they have hit those reduction targets. I very much regret that I did not sign these amendments, and I certainly will if they come back on Report.

We all know that the international waste economy is a nasty, polluting system, where the richest countries are using the poorest countries as dump sites—as giant landfill sites. Many people would be outraged, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, to see that the recycling that they so carefully do is just baled up and dumped on poor countries and among poor communities, who then have to suffer the pollution that it causes.

So the export of waste is nasty, but I am also concerned about the increasing capacity of UK incinerators. From what I can see, the planned capacity of these incinerators will soon far exceed the amount of waste that the UK produces. Many local authorities are, of course, tied into 25-year contracts with such businesses. This means they will be looking around for waste to burn. So either these companies and their investors will sustain losses or—and this is a much more concerning option—they will begin to import waste from abroad into the UK. So I would very much appreciate the Minister giving us the Government’s opinion on incinerator companies importing waste from abroad. Will the Government allow it, or will they join me, and I am sure many others, in calling for it to be banned? These amendments render a very simple option: to clean up our responsibility—our pollution—towards the rest of the world. I hope the Government accept them.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I absolutely agree with her and would also like to add my voice to asking the question about the payments that go towards incinerators for waste. This also happens sneakily in the food system, and you end up with the absolute absurdity that some food companies are actually manufacturing food in order to be able to meet their commitment or contract with a waste incinerator, which is meant to have waste food—I will come to that later.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, I have also watched “Trashed” and it would make a very good film for a lot of people to see. It is pathetic that people spend their time recycling, only for it to end up being burned in a Turkish field, surrounded by little boys who are poking through the rubble on the off-chance that they will find something sellable. At least they see some kind of value in the plastic that we of course do not because, culturally, we have been told this is worthless. So I would also like to add my voice to support all schemes around bottle return. We have to see plastic as valuable: after all, it has taken air, oil, water, sky, soil et cetera to make it.

One of the things that also came out from the Greenpeace briefings was that, when we send waste out of the country, we send vast trailers. Someone attempting to check it who pulls the front down will see four bales when, in fact, the container probably has 400. So there is no possibility of knowing anything about this. The brokers are in it for the money and they do not take their duty of care seriously.

There was another point that came up. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned the Adana region, where Greenpeace was working. Greenpeace went to the Environment Agency and said, “Can we have a list of approved addresses where waste in Turkey is being sent?” It was given eight to check and four did not even exist. So we know this is a scam, and we know it has to stop. I am extremely pleased that Turkey has put its foot down—although it is a bit embarrassing that places such as China and other countries like it have put their foot down before we were able to put our foot down and start asking ourselves why we produce so much and what we are going to do about it.

It seems to me that of course we have to a good extended producer responsibility scheme. We have to ban our plastic waste—we cannot just send it away—and we have to have legally binding deposit schemes. But on a big level, on a cultural level, we need a real level of behaviour change from the supermarkets, everybody in retail and, in particular, from Amazon. It sends the most staggering amount of packaging with very small things. It seems that we shift our plastic problem from one place to the next. I do not know about other noble Lords but, certainly during this pandemic, I have had things arrive from Amazon that I am frankly embarrassed to have. Nobody ever touches that kind of area, and I think that we should. I am really glad the Government are getting on top of this. I will support these amendments wholeheartedly and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, I will support them if they come back on Report.

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Moved by

[Baroness Boycott]

149: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Food waste
(1) This section applies to a retailer who—(a) generates more than 10 tons of food waste per year, or (b) operates stores which with a floor area of more than 400 metres squared.(2) A retailer to whom this section applies must recycle wasted food products, having regard to the following steps listed in order of priority—(a) preventing food waste (for example, by not ordering more of a food product than they expect to sell);(b) using unsold food which is fit for human consumption (for example, through food donation or processing);(c) recovering unsold food which is fit for animal consumption into feedstock;(d) converting food waste into compost for agriculture or for energy recovery, including biogas.(3) A retailer to whom this section applies must make an agreement in relation to each store which it operates with at least one charitable organisation which distributes donated food, having taken reasonable steps to ascertain that the charitable organisation uses appropriate processes to distribute food through a clearly advertised address.(4) A local authority may impose a financial penalty on a retailer in relation to a store within its area if the authority is satisfied beyond reasonable that the person has breached subsection (2) or (3).(5) The amount of the financial penalty is to be such amount as the authority determines but not to be more than £5,000.(6) A retailer to whom this section applies or a large food manufacturer must disclose to the Secretary of State the volume of food waste in their supply chain.(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the requirement in subsection (6), including the definition of “a large food manufacturer” and what details must be disclosed and to whom.(8) The Secretary of State must make regular reports to Parliament about the volume of food waste being reported under subsection (6).(9) The Secretary of State must consult those likely to be affected by this section before making regulations under this section.(10) The Secretary of State must ensure that the volume of food being wasted is at least—(a) 60% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2025;(b) 80% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2030.(11) The Secretary of State must conduct a public education campaign on the issues caused by food waste including but not limited to—(a) climate change, and(b) biodiversity loss.(12) In this section—“food waste” and “food waste reduction” are to be defined by the Secretary of State by regulations, taking account of such terms as have been validated by or are in accordance with—(a) the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,(b) the Waste and Resources Action Programme, and(c) the waste hierarchy as set out in the Waste (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 (SI 2011/988) and Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 (SI 2012/1889), save that methods of “food waste reduction” for the purposes of this section may not include any form of waste disposal. “retailer” means any person carrying on (or actively seeking to carry on) a business in any part of the United Kingdom for the supply of groceries to consumers.”

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I really wish that I was not having to move this amendment. I speak as the chair of Feeding Britain, and all through this pandemic we have been giving out meals to an extraordinary amount of people—the numbers have doubled. We have got food from many different food redistribution companies, notably companies such as FareShare and individual supermarkets. Many supermarkets have stepped up to the challenge over the last 18 months and have given away a great deal more food, but there are still lapses in the system. This is, essentially, an extremely simple amendment that just says that big supermarkets must, by law, have a relationship with a food redistribution centre. This was introduced a few years back by Kerry McCarthy in the other place. Indeed, the now Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, signed her 10-minute rule Bill supporting this idea, and such a proposal is now law in France.

We have just been listening to lots of statistics about waste. The most recent one that I have found is that the UK’s biggest supermarkets bin 190 million meals a year. Is that true? I do not know, but it comes from WRAP. My guess is that it is true, and that a lot of food that is up to its sell-by date but still perfectly edible is chucked out the door. That is really what I want to see changed—and I want it to change culturally. At the moment, food is very cheap; I want people to see that it has a value and importance. In the end, with this amendment, as the chair of Feeding Britain, I would like us all to be put of business; at the moment, we are not out of business and are, in fact, incredibly needed. As people come off furlough, the numbers who are using Feeding Britain feeding sites are rising, not going down.

One of the other things that I talk about in this amendment is that we need to get to the food waste pyramid. Food should always be thought of as food for humans: if it has not been sold, it must go for donation; if we cannot eat it, it should feed an animal; and if that cannot happen, it should feed the soil. There is a very exact pyramid to show the way that this works.

The amendment also seeks penalties for retailers which do not do this and to ensure that the volume of food being wasted is at least—and this is where I challenge the Government, because I know that this is above their targets—60% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2025 and 80% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2030.

I did not make this up. I consulted Dave Lewis who, from 2014 until last year, ran Tesco. I asked him what it would take, what we can do, who we can push, and what we can achieve. He came back with these figures. I know the figures will be repeated in the food strategy, so this is doable and challenging. As we all know, this is the year of COP. Food waste is responsible for so much: relevant to the last group of amendments, food waste is the reason we have so much plastic floating around. All these things connect. It is about getting the public to understand that food is valuable and plastic is valuable, and therefore must not be thrown away. We need to do it in the right way.

My other point in this amendment is that the Secretary of State must conduct a public education campaign around the question of food waste and making people understand that, every time we throw food away, we are adding to our environmental problems. As many noble Lords have just said, throwing food away with the plastic adds to all sorts of environment and social problems, but food itself costs air, soil and energy. As the Dasgupta reported showed, these things are valuable and valuable to our society.

I hope that at least part of this quite long amendment will be taken up by the Government. There are currently 13 million people in this country, mostly kids, who are what you could call food-stressed—they do not have enough food and cannot afford enough healthy food. If you want to eat 1,000 healthy calories, it costs about five times more than it does to eat 1,000 unhealthy calories. Much of the food that hits its sell-by date is good, proper food. It has been grown, processed and packaged; a lot has gone into it and we chuck it. We could, very easily—and culturally it would be a big deal—just put this amendment in the Bill and be like the French. Their food recycling went up immediately by 20%—that is a lot of meals.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I thank your Lordships, and the Minister, whose final words were telling in that the Government have gone some way towards fixing this problem. I congratulate the Government on all the work which has been done through WRAP. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign has been terrific. However, the target is not high enough, and all sorts of things are not yet good enough.

I thank the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, in particular the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I completely agree with him that the food waste at the top of the supply chain is one of the biggest culprits lurking out there, and that we must get at it. In social supermarkets which I have set up, we extracted extraordinary amounts of products which were useless because the labelling was wrong, advertising the football, for example. Where does that food go? That is where we really need government support and transparency.

I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, and I agree with her that energy from waste is a very good way to describe it. I know that Ludlow at one point ran its school bus on the food waste which people put in buckets at the ends of their drives. It was very effective because people got involved, and it helped them to understand that there is proper energy, life and all sorts of good stuff in food. As she said, I indeed have lots of relatives in Denmark who are unbelievably good about it, and also do bottle deposit schemes.

I found myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that it should apply to every sort of supermarket.d I disagree with him only when he mentioned the catering industry. On the whole, caterers are very canny with their money, and tend to get the right amount of food to feed people. I am always incredibly impressed when I find myself in the same place as a caterer. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, although I wonder where his children were. Were they on the roof, or was it some birds? I saw a whole load of storks this weekend, not far from Eastbourne—perhaps they came down to feed on his waste food, as they are very hungry all the time. He was completely right about plastic packaging—we must use less.

As always, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said the key things, noting that the public are far ahead of the Government on this. We all want this. This has to be done, because we must get at the industry. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for her support. I echo her view about the coming summer holidays, which should be lovely, but are in fact scary for a huge number of parents. Supermarkets should know how much to get, and not wait for the cookery shows.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, gave a fantastic speech. I am so glad to get all that incredible data on the record. I did not know the statistic about one in five cars, which is really staggering—so I thank her for that.

I shall leave noble Lords with a couple of thoughts about France. Data obtained by the Independent from the Carrefour supermarket chain, the second largest in France with a socking great 20% market share, shows that in 2020 it donated 30,371 tonnes of food from its supermarkets, the equivalent of 72 million meals, meaning that a single French supermarket exceeded the donations of all 10 UK supermarkets by more than 6,000 tonnes. France is now ranked number one by the Food Sustainability Index.

The point about that is that people really liked it. It is a very popular law. Meanwhile, the UK’s top 10 chains donated less than 9% of their surplus food for human consumption. We could really change this. After the end of this pandemic, for the Government to say “This is going to go into law” would be incredibly popular. The supermarkets are already three-quarters of the way along the road, and if we can take on board the fact that it should be all of them, we would have a win that would be a good one. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 149 withdrawn.