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

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)]

My Lords, by 2030 a rising global population is expected to mean that demand for food will have increased by 50%. Food waste requires urgent action across Europe and throughout the world, as several noble Lords have said. A third of the food produced globally is wasted, which is about 90 million tonnes in Europe and 1.3 billion tonnes globally. We must address this if we are to mitigate the increasing demand for food and resources around the world.

I welcome and am grateful for the committee’s report and the direction in which it points as to where we need to take action. It makes an important contribution to the whole subject of food waste and provides some helpful recommendations. It is timely because, as noble Lords know, the Commission is undertaking a review of the revised waste framework directive. Indeed, we do need to work together across Europe to reduce waste. We have now seen the EU Commission’s proposal on food waste, which we broadly welcome. As noble Lords have said, the UK has already taken concerted action to reduce food waste over a number of years, and is recognised as a world leader in food waste prevention through the work of WRAP.

We have built up extensive knowledge in measuring and understanding how to reduce food waste, and a mark of how WRAP’s advice is recognised is through its input to EU projects such as FUSIONS, work by the World Resources Institute and UNEP. The UK’s approach is being used as a case study for the OECD. We are pressing to ensure that the Commission’s target to reduce food waste by 30% recognises our early action. We are currently undertaking an analysis on how any such target might be reached, and its potential impact on the UK.

UK householders waste 7 million tonnes of food—that is £12.5 billion of food per year, which is about £60 a month for an average family. Of that, £5.5 billion is due to food not used in time. Food is also wasted across the supply chain—roughly 4 million tonnes in manufacturing, 0.5 million tonnes in food retail and 1 million tonnes in the hospitality sector. We all know that we ought to be wasting much less food. Food wasted means that we have fewer pounds in our pocket and the energy and water used to produce and transport the food has been wasted. Most people want to do something about food waste and we are taking steps to help them do that. Food waste was identified as a priority nearly a decade ago for my department, and the UK has taken early action. It remains a cornerstone of WRAP’s work and a priority for future work addressing the whole waste hierarchy for food.

The first step of this work was the launch of the Courtauld commitment in 2005—a voluntary agreement with the grocery sector. Under this agreement all the main supermarkets and food manufacturers signed up to targets and action on food and packaging waste in the supply chain and in households. While initially focusing on packaging, a food waste target was introduced in 2007. Over the first two phases of the Courtauld commitment we have seen that: 2.9 million tonnes of waste with a value of £4 billion was prevented; packaging was reduced by 1 million tonnes; and UK annual household food waste decreased by 15%—1.3 million tonnes—between 2007 and 2012. The third phase of the Courtauld commitment is under way, running until the end of 2015, and we expect it to prevent just over 1 million tonnes of waste, with additional savings of £1.6 billion and to lead to a total reduction of household food waste of 20% since 2007.

Running alongside the Courtauld commitment has been the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, providing ideas and information to help households waste less. Around half of food waste is produced by households. We have evidence of increasing positive behaviours among consumers, such as checking cupboards before shopping, making shopping lists and planning meals.

In addition, we have diversified our approach to include the hospitality and food service sector, launching the voluntary hospitality and food service agreement in 2012. There are over 170 signatories and supporters with ambitious targets to reduce the amount of food waste that they produce, and to manage it better by recycling and sending food for anaerobic digestion to produce energy.

In response to my noble friends Lady Scott and Lady Byford, we have also worked with industry to move to a simpler date-labelling system, with the phasing out of “display until” or “sell by” dates. As the committee recommended, the guidance on the Food Information Regulations is now available on the Food Standards Agency website, and will be further improved and moved to the GOV.UK website by the end of the year.

Related to this, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to “buy one, get one free” deals. The majority of promotions are temporary price reductions; examples include “was £8, now £6” or “three for £10”. “Buy one, get one free” deals are often on non-perishable items or items with long lives. WRAP works with retailers to encourage alternative promotions for perishable foods. This approach enables consumers to make savings, but still buy the amounts or range of food that are right for them.

The Product Sustainability Forum, which is a collaboration of organisations made up of grocery retailers and suppliers, academics, NGOs and government, works to measure, improve and communicate the environmental performance of grocery products, using a farm-to-fork approach. This included a project on potatoes that identified points in the whole value chain where waste was created and how it could be reduced. We have also commissioned research to improve our understanding of wastage on farm, as I know the committee’s report has recommended a need to look into this sector.

Action has been taken to ensure that surplus food can be redistributed to people before being put to any other use. While the committee’s report has recommended the need for fiscal measures, WRAP advises that a financial incentive already exists, the redistribution and collection costs being on average cheaper than collection costs and gate fees when sending to anaerobic digestion. The industry working group that we convened has been identifying other barriers and then solutions. The result of this was the publication in March of new research, case studies and guiding principles to enable the industry to redistribute more food.

My noble friend Lady Scott, among others, asked about feeding waste to animals. If not suitable for people, some food waste may indeed be fed to animals. As the committee’s report has recommended, there is a need to seek to increase this. As noble Lords know, there are strict EU regulations governing this, but in response to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, we have commissioned further research to examine the risks to determine whether that approach is still appropriate. WRAP also produced guidance, published in September, to demonstrate that some food, such as bread, cakes, confectionary and cheese, would be permitted for this purpose, and set out the economic case for doing so.

The noble Lords, Lord Whitty, Lord Cameron, and Lord Grantchester, among others, asked about WRAP funding. I am on record as being a huge fan of WRAP and endorse the supportive comments of noble Lords. We worked closely with WRAP and key stakeholders, particularly those in the industry, to ensure that the activities that we fund are targeted and making a critical difference to business performance. WRAP has stepped back from work in areas such as construction and demolition waste, where market failures have already largely been addressed; the industry is now recovering a large amount of the materials used through re-use and recycling.

Food waste, however, remains an area where market failures still exist, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said. So we continue to support WRAP for this work at a level of funding that is broadly similar to that before the review. WRAP will continue to deliver priority projects such as Courtauld, the hospitality agreement and Love Food Hate Waste. It will also develop an ambitious post-2015 programme of work.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, spoke of wastage in developing countries. I agree that this is an important area. He mentioned research that this country funds and he knows of our agritech strategy, in which DfID is a key participant department. Some £10 million of the funding in that strategy is targeted at developing countries. Indeed, technology could make dramatic improvements in efficiency and bear down on waste.

In response to a question from my noble friend Lady Scott, Defra has been working with the Commission and other member states on the Commission’s communication on sustainable food. The publication of the communication has to be a decision for the new Commission—and I have to say, it is early days.

My noble friend Lady Scott and the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Grantchester, referred to the Groceries Code Adjudicator and whether she could make a difference in this area. The Groceries Supply Code of Practice aims to prevent retailers from transferring excessive risk to their suppliers through unreasonable business practices—that is what it is about. Two of its conditions cover wastage and forecasting errors, clarifying the conditions on which compensation for these may be sought. The greater certainty provided to suppliers and the role that the Groceries Code Adjudicator will play may indeed help to reduce waste.

My noble friend Lady Parminter asked about the reporting of retailers’ figures. Retailers currently report their food waste figures through the Courtauld commitment. We are working with WRAP and industry partners to develop a collaborative framework for the reduction of waste throughout the food chain. This framework will continue the good work of Courtauld and will be the place for the continued reporting of food waste.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, asked about publicising Love Food Hate Waste. Information on choosing, cooking and eating a healthy diet is provided via NHS Choices, including the Change4Life social marketing campaign and guidance on healthier and more sustainable catering. The “eatwell plate” displays the proportions and types of foods that should be eaten as part of a healthy lifestyle. The Government’s Change4Life programme provides tools and resources that incentivise and encourage behaviour change; for example, the Meal Mixer app has been downloaded more than 1 million times and contains hundreds of quick, healthy and affordable family recipes.

Some noble Lords asked about collection at local authority level. We have no plans to compel councils to adopt household food waste collections, but WRAP has been working in seven local authority areas to understand methods to maximise resident participation in food waste collections and ensure that all non-preventable food waste is recycled. Early indications are that there are a number of affordable interventions that local authorities can adopt to maximise take-up of existing schemes. WRAP will be providing updated guidance for local authorities in December.

To the extent that I have not answered noble Lords’ questions, perhaps I might write. The committee’s report included a recommendation on the need to work with WRAP to deliver a whole-supply-chain approach. I agree that there is a need for policy and action to evolve to tackle food waste across the whole value chain and I recognise the close relationship between food waste, food security and sustainability. That is why we have been working closely with WRAP in its development of proposals for an initiative that looks at how the food we produce and eat can be more sustainable and secure and where waste can be further reduced. This is more than a mere successor to Courtauld 3 but it will continue and expand that work, and put the onus on industry to take greater ownership. This project should influence global supply chains and could therefore have an impact in the EU and beyond.

That work demonstrates the knowledge we have developed and the tried and tested approaches that we have delivered, and is a model that we encourage others across the EU to take up. This action demonstrates the good work that has already been done and is currently happening, but we are looking to the future to develop a strategic and long-term approach to reducing food waste.