Food Waste (Reduction)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to make provision for a scheme to establish incentives to implement and encourage observance of the food waste reduction hierarchy; to encourage individuals, businesses and public bodies to reduce the amount of food they waste; to require large supermarkets, manufacturers and distributors to reduce their food waste by no less than 30 per cent by 2025 and to enter into formal agreements with food redistribution organisations; to require large supermarkets and food manufacturers to disclose levels of food waste in their supply chain; and for connected purposes.

Three years ago, I made my first attempt to introduce a food waste Bill. I am now returning to that topic, very aptly, in zero waste week. Although some progress has been made during the past three years—and, indeed, before that—we could do so much better if the Government were firmly in the driving seat.

I am not the only one who is saying this. In January, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee called for DEFRA to appoint a food security co-ordinator to spur a step change in the redistribution of surplus food to those in need, and, in its excellent report “Feeding Britain”, the all-party parliamentary group on hunger and food poverty suggested that redistributing and using surplus food would be

“the next big breakthrough… in eliminating hunger”

in the United Kingdom—although, as Mark Goodway, the founder of the inspiring Matthew Tree Project in Bristol, has said, the problem of food poverty is not lack of food:

“The lack of food is an indication that something else has gone wrong and this is what needs to be addressed.”

That, however, is a topic—a big topic—for another day.

It is estimated that about a third of the food produced globally is wasted. That puts pressure on scarce land and resources, contributes to deforestation, and needlessly adds to global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind the US and China. The sheer waste of our planet’s scarce resources is bad enough, but it is truly shocking that so much good food is going to waste when so many people on our planet are dying from hunger and malnutrition, and so many are living in food poverty here in the UK.

We hear much about the future challenge of feeding a growing population from a shrinking agricultural base, but we are already producing enough food: if we cut food waste by just a quarter, there would be enough to feed everyone on the planet. It is a scandal that we are not doing so. In the UK, we produce about 15 million tonnes of food waste annually, and about 400,000 tonnes of that is fit for human consumption. It cannot be right that good, edible food is thrown away, or turned into compost or energy, when people are going to bed hungry, skipping meals, or cannot afford to give their children a nutritious evening meal. I want to make it clear that this Bill is not primarily about household food waste, on which the public focus tends to be. More than half the food wasted is wasted by the food industry across the supply chain, and that is my focus today.

In the UK we redistribute only 2% of our fit-for-consumption surplus food. France redistributes 20 times more, so we could do an awful lot better. On Monday I visited FareShare’s London depot to hear how it is supporting more than 200 organisations, including domestic violence refuges, homeless shelters, hostels, food banks, pensioners’ lunch clubs, and breakfast and after-school clubs. According to FareShare, if we redistributed 25% of our surplus food, it would save the voluntary sector up to £250 million a year. This would make surplus food the second largest supporter of charity after the Big Lottery.

Let me turn now to specific measures in the Bill. It calls for supermarkets to be required to enter into formal agreements with food redistribution organisations to donate to them unsold in-date food. That is based on a recent French legislative proposal and Belgian law. It would address the so-called back-of-store and retail depot waste—food that has already made it into the store. However, that accounts for only about 2% of the food wasted. Waste in the supermarket supply chain is a much bigger issue.

Waste in the supermarket supply chain is generated because of things such as poor demand forecasting, over-ordering or cosmetic requirements—the need for fruit and vegetables to be free from visual imperfections. An estimated 20% to 40% of perfectly edible UK fruit and veg is rejected by supermarkets before it even reaches the shops. So my Bill also calls on large supermarkets and manufacturers to be transparent and to disclose the levels of food waste in their supply chain and reduce their own food waste by at least 30% by 2025. That is in line with the European Commission target of reducing all food waste by at least 30% between 2017 and 2025, which I hope will make its way into its circular economy strategy later this year, and in line with the sustainable development goal of halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level—which is easiest to tackle—by 2030.

The Bill also asks the Government to look at possible incentives to encourage observance of the food waste hierarchy, so that ideally food waste is prevented from occurring in the first place, but if it does occur it is donated for human consumption if possible, or then for livestock feed, or then for anaerobic digestion, rather than going to landfill. At the moment it is cheaper and more convenient for supermarkets to send their surplus to AD or for livestock feed than donate it to charities.

In its “Counting the Cost of Food Waste” report last year the Lords European Union Committee recommended that the UK Government

“undertake their own assessment of how they might further promote the redistribution of food to humans by way of fiscal measures. Particular attention should be given to encouraging the redistribution of fresh, nutritious food.”

The report highlighted fiscal measures, from VAT exemptions to tax deductions and tax breaks, which

“could help align economic incentives more effectively with the food use hierarchy.”

The Government response to this was disappointing, and I hope my Bill will encourage further consideration of what measures could be adopted.

It is also worth noting that the AD industry receives Government subsidies as well as, for example, interest- free loans from the Green Investment Bank, yet food redistribution receives no subsidies or support. The Government are effectively subsidising a food waste management system lower down the waste hierarchy, but are, as yet, providing no support for a more resource-efficient one.

Finally, my Bill calls on the Government to encourage all individuals, businesses and public bodies to reduce the amount of food they waste. We can all play a role. As the director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, José Graziano da Silva, has said:

“We can do a lot from the local to the global levels, from producers to consumers, from personal choices to policy decisions that create an enabling environment to reduce food waste and loss.”

I am pleased to see the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in his place today and thank him once again for attending the launch of my Bill yesterday. Were he able to speak today, he would no doubt point to progress that has been made on a voluntary basis. Household food waste has reduced by 21% since 2007, partly due to the efforts of the Waste and Resources Action Programme and its “Love Food Hate Waste” campaign. WRAP needs to be properly resourced to carry on its valuable work.

Some supermarkets have started to rise to the challenge. Tesco, in a brave move, decided not only to publish its levels of back-of-store food waste, but to audit some of its best-selling products across the whole supply chain. It has developed an app that notifies charities what surplus food is available for collection from its stores each day. I saw a demonstration of that on Monday, and it really simplifies the process and makes it much easier for charities to know what food is available to them.

However, not all supermarkets are rising to the challenge, and they should be. Indeed, at the recent Stockholm food forum, some companies said that they would prefer to be legally obliged to deliver the UN food waste target, so that there is a level playing field, where not just the good guys are rising to the challenge, but everyone else is required to do so too.

The Minister would, no doubt, point to the Courtauld commitment, but it is a purely voluntary agreement; it does not cover large amounts of waste higher up the supply chain and its targets are unambitious. Indeed, 80% of progress on its previous targets came from tackling household food waste. I hope that the fourth phase, Courtauld 2025, will be much more ambitious than previous iterations.

As I began by saying, I do not believe that voluntary action alone can drive the change that is needed. The current approach of nudging us along the way, with a few good initiatives, some education and some encouragement, is not enough when the imperative for action is so great. We have an example of what Government action could achieve: the last Labour Government’s landfill tax was one of the most successful waste policies ever for driving behavioural change and for creating markets in more environmental forms of disposal such as anaerobic digestion.

We can do the same for food waste, moving up the waste hierarchy, pushing for prevention and much more donation, and that is why I urge the Minister to support the Bill and politely ask him to have a word with his Whips to allow it to be considered in Committee, so that we can work together on this, drive forward the agenda in a really ambitious way and respond to the huge level of public support out there for action on this issue.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Kerry McCarthy, Caroline Lucas, Zac Goldsmith, Margaret Ferrier, Huw Irranca-Davies, Seema Malhotra, Frank Field, Steve Rotheram, Dr Alan Whitehead, Daniel Zeichner and Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck present the Bill.

Kerry McCarthy accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 29 January 2016, and to be printed (Bill 67).