Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to reduce food waste.

Defra supports a range of action to reduce food waste.

At the household level, we are tackling food waste through supporting campaigns such as Love Food, Hate Waste and Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date as well as the UK’s first Food Waste Action Week which was held in March 2021. We also support the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and its work with retailers and other food businesses who play a key role in influencing household food waste through interventions such as pack sizing and labelling. These measures all help consumers to buy what they need and use what they buy.

For reducing waste in the supply chain, we support the Courtauld 2025 voluntary agreement delivered by WRAP that looks to reduce food waste by 20% by 2025. Action here is primarily through the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap and the Target, Measure, Act approach where businesses set a reduction target, measure food waste and act to reduce it. This is currently voluntary under the Roadmap, but we will consult this year on introducing regulations to make the transparent reporting of food waste mandatory for businesses of an appropriate size. We also support resource efficiency in the hospitality sector through the Guardians of Grub campaign delivered by WRAP.

Since 2018 Defra has made a series of grants available to help redistribute more surplus food to those who have a need and to stop it from going to animal feed or disposal destinations. In total over £11 million has been awarded to both large and small redistribution organisations across the country.

Defra has appointed Ben Elliot as Food Surplus and Waste Champion. Ben is motivating business leaders to tackle food waste from farm to fork, including through support for the delivery of the Courtauld 2025 commitments.