EU: Counting the Cost of Food Waste (EUC Report)

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, many noble Lords have spoken about all the rational reasons why it is important not to waste food. Certainly, food security is not a given: we are in a very frail food chain.

As other noble Lords have mentioned, when we waste food we are wasting energy, which is an especially important consideration at a time of climate change. But we are also wasting water when we waste food. In fact, enough water is used in the irrigation of food grown globally that is wasted—that is, water irrigating just wasted food—for the domestic needs of 9 billion people. I got that figure from the wonderful Tristram Stuart, and I find it really shocking.

Furthermore, when we waste food we are wasting land. Here in the UK good quality agricultural land is pretty limited. Some people do not think we even have enough to spare some to allow the small percentage that it would take of extra hedgerows, grass strips and small copses to turn our farmland from somewhere that is failing wildlife at the moment into somewhere that is rich in biodiversity. I thoroughly agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, when he said that it is in fact the nutrition per hectare that is important. That is an interesting shift in thinking, which has started in the last two or three years.

Finally, when we waste food we also are wasting money. Those are all very sound reasons not to waste food.

I believe that this report hits such a spot because food is such a cultural thing. If we think of the word “company”—as in “I enjoy your company”—it comes from “cum pane” and means literally “with bread”, as in “I am breaking bread with you”. As I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, will appreciate, with her big dinner tonight, when you invite good friends round, you invite them for a meal; you do not invite them round just to sit on a chair. Therefore, the importance of the issue reaches beyond the actual numbers; it is a very cultural thing that we are wasting food and a comment on society. That is why I am very pleased that this excellent, measured and hard-hitting report from Sub-Committee D has already contributed so much to the essential movement to limit and eradicate food waste. The press coverage that it got when it came out is a credit to my noble friend the chairman and to the quality of the report.

The conclusions and recommendations struck me as very sound, and I shall just mention a few. As the committee says in its report, I was horrified by how little effort or emphasis the Commission has put into this subject so far. The report spells that out very clearly. But equally, here in the UK, I was saddened, as paragraph 159 demonstrated, by how little has happened over the past 10 or 15 years with regard to domestic food waste reduction. Of course, I appreciate how difficult that is. The reason why I have taken that timescale is that I stood down as a councillor in 2005, and in the nine years since then little seems to have changed.

I was interested in the reply—this was in the briefing pack for this debate from the Library—to a Commons Question on 23 June this year, which shows the breakdown of separate food waste by local authority. It is really patchy; some are performing pretty well, but the performance of some is absolutely abysmal. In Lambeth, where I am a council tax payer, they managed to recycle only a few hundred tonnes, and even that has halved over the three-year period. Yet some small rural districts are managing to recycle thousands of tonnes. When my noble friend the Minister replies, can he say why he thinks that there is such an uneven rate of success among local authorities? I know, and I agree, that normally Governments should be hands-off with local authorities, but this seems a particular case where encouragement and guidance really does not seem to have achieved much.

I am glad that the report’s final conclusion is that a voluntary approach is sound for now but that in five years’ time, if nothing has changed, it might need to be followed up by legislation. That was certainly underlined by my experience earlier in the week when I visited Brussels. My visit was the culmination of a report from the Industry and Parliament Trust, the Food Ethics Council and Warwick University, called The Long and the Short of It, which is about sustainable food supply chains. Among other things, we too found, as this committee’s report mentions in paragraph 212, that the DGs need to improve their co-ordination enormously. We were pleased to hear that at least the new Commission, even though it has been in place only for a short time, has already set up two horizontal working groups between environment and agriculture. Perhaps we can look forward to some more.

We also concluded that much of the investment, focus and drive for more sustainable food chains come largely from the private sector, and that it is the public sector that needs to catch up. However, for the debate today we received a briefing from the BRC that was helpful but struck me as slightly complacent. I would not like to think that the private sector was beginning to coast just because the public sector has a lot of catching up to do.

It is important to practise what you preach, and here in the House of Lords we are vigorously pursing the reduction path. Other noble Lords have mentioned the importance of the hierarchy. There is currently a food waste audit under way that is to report by Christmas. Our catering manager believes, correctly, that you need to know where the various elements of waste are arising, whether in preparation, uneaten portions or food offered but not chosen, before you can go for further reduction. The audit will give our catering department the tools to make us among the most sustainable restaurant categories with regard to waste. Currently, our food waste, which used to go for incineration, goes to an AD plant. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that it is better for it to go to AD than nothing but that it is better for it not to be wasted in the first place.