UK Food Waste Down, But No Room for Complacency

15 November 2011

Over the past three years the UK's Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has met all its published major targets, helping to keep 11 million tonnes of waste out of landfill, avoid 5.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions and generate £2 billion of benefits to the UK economy.

Speaking at WRAP's annual conference, Dr Liz Goodwin, chief executive at WRAP published results of the organisation's work over the past three years and set out its future agenda.

According to the programme, while food waste in the UK has declined by 13% over the previous three years, the country still discards some £12 billion of edible food each year.

Commenting on the food waste figures, Goodwin said that the fall in household food waste since 2006/07 from 8.3 million tonnes to 7.2 million tonnes per year was very welcome and probably due to a range of factors.

However, the chief executive also said there was a big job still to do in dealing with the "significant" food wasted throughout the supply chain at a time when food security was a major global issue.

She also announced the results of the first major research into the benefits of greater reuse of materials such as textiles. According to Goodwin, this showed that there would be significant gains for both UK jobs and the environment through reusing goods and services, rather than discarding them.

Response

In response to the release of the latest WRAP figures showing a fall in UK household waste generated over the last three years, the Food and Drink Federation's (FDF) director of sustainability and competitiveness, Andrew Kuyk commented:

"These figures represent a significant achievement in changing consumer behaviour - which is vital step towards tackling the unacceptably high levels of food waste in the UK. 

"This is why FDF and its members are focused on helping consumers reduce food waste including work with WRAP as part of Courtauld Commitment 2 and the Love Food Hate Waste campaign.

"Our most recent survey of waste arisings, published in 2010, showed that the industry is now sending less than 9% of its food waste to landfill and is on track to meet its target of zero food and packaging waste to landfill by 2015."


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