Today’s announcement of the third phase of the Courtauld Commitment, the UK’s voluntary framework for addressing waste in the food industry, is a welcome step in the fight against food waste in the UK, committing the industry to reducing its food waste by 20% by 2025. The announcement comes after the United Nations established its new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which included a target of halving food waste by 2030.

Whilst the current food waste reduction commitment does not include the colossal amounts of food wasted on UK farms, Courtauld 2025 does include a plan to work on the measurement of pre-farmgate food waste by 2018. Having campaigned on the issue of farm level food waste since 2009, Feedback welcomes this step but more work needs to be done to address waste across the supply chain that the UK’s retailers are ultimately responsible for.

It is clear that when it comes to food waste citizens are fed up with supermarkets’ routine mistreatment of their suppliers and their disregard for ‘ugly’ fruit and vegetables. Over a million people have signed Feedback’s petition calling on national action plans to force supermarkets to reduce their food waste by redistributing surplus food, relaxing cosmetic standards for fruit and vegetables and treating their suppliers more fairly.

UK households have also been leading the way in reducing waste and have shown just how much is possible, having achieved a 21% reduction in food waste in just seven years between 2007 and 2014. Today’s commitment is a welcome starting point for the industry to start matching this ambition and respond to the overwhelming public demand for action to end waste across our food system.

To really start addressing food waste in their supply chains, retailers must relax cosmetic specifications to ensure more ‘imperfect’ fruit and vegetables reach consumers and that all food grown for them finds a market. They must also end unfair trading practices – cancelling or modifying orders or agreements at the last minute without compensation and at the expense of the farmer. Retailers can achieve this on a voluntary basis by improving forecasting and communications with their suppliers; offering them guaranteed prices and volumes or whole crop purchasing; and stop using cosmetic specifications as an excuse for last minute changes in orders. The Groceries Code Adjudicator has the power to investigate such practices and even fine supermarkets that are found to break competition law by treating their suppliers unfairly.

Today’s Courtauld Commitment announcement is a strong statement of intent from the food industry with a welcome emphasis on collaboration. But there is clearly plenty of room for competition to raise the ambition for action against food waste. Retailers continue to report their food waste figures in an untransparent way by publishing one aggregate food waste figure for the whole industry. However, Tesco – one of the Commitment’s signatories – responded to pressure by Feedback’s campaigning  by publishing third party audited figures of how much food it wastes in its UK operations as well as identifying food waste hot spots in its supply chain. Crucially, other retailers should follow suit and openly publish how much food they individually waste so they can be held accountable to public scrutiny and begin a race to the top to prove which supermarket is least wasteful.

The UK wastes more food than any other country in Europe but it’s also leading the way working on the solutions to tackle the problem. The rest of the world will be looking to the UK as a leader to learn from its lessons in dealing with waste to achieve the SDG goal of halving food waste by 2030. It is therefore crucial  that action in the UK is up to the task and that the industry accountable to its promises.

Food waste is on the march cover of the world-renowned National Geographic magazine. After visiting food producers in Peru, Feedback founder Tristram Stuart found this 1000-tonne heap of delcious Tangelo – a kind of ultra-juicy tangerine – rotting in the desert. So, what would Paddington Bear have to say?

Paddington could have made an awful lot of his favourite marmalade, but the producer of this citrus crop routinely wastes over a thousand tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables even while 3.6 million of his compatriots are malnourished. It’s not his fault that so much food is wasted – so who’s responsibility is it?

Feedback has so far conducted research trips to Kenya, Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica: in most of these locations, producers growing for export regularly waste between 10 and 50% of their harvests thanks to the unfair and unnecessary policies of powerful European and American buyers. In the case of these oranges they were being wasted because of minor unavoidable skin blemishes that mean they fail European supermarkets’ ultra-strict cosmetic standards. Can hardly see the blemish? That is the point: it’s nearly invisible. The fruit on the inside is perfectly good; supermarkets could sell it to willing consumers; but instead, anything that the local markets in Peru can’t absorb, simply goes to waste.

It doesn’t need to be this way: if supermarkets relaxed their standards, and helped their producers find other less fussy buyers, and the remainder were donated to local charities, there wouldn’t be anything like this kind of waste. Importers often try to wriggle out of paying for produce by claiming it failed to meet cosmetic standards, when in reality the reason they are cancelling the order is because they’ve failed to find a market for it themselves, or sometimes it’s just a fraudulent way of exploiting relatively powerless suppliers in far-off countries. Feedback has already shown it’s possible to design waste out of these systems, when supermarkets take responsibility for the waste they cause. If you want supermarkets to Stop Dumping waste on their suppliers, sign up to our Stop Dumping campaign.

Needless to say, while Tristram was in Lima he saved a token few hundred kilos of food from going to waste and with that brought together a range of local partners (and an array of local and international media) to celebrate the delicious solutions to food waste at Lima’s second ever Disco Sopa. Dozens of volunteers came together to chop and prepare an absolutely mouth-watering feast under the awe-inspiring guidance of top Lima chef Palmiro Ocampo. With the collaboration of of Lia Celi Castro, General Manager of Banco de Alimentos Peru (the Peruvian Food Bank) a group of local orphans joined in the food prep, including one young trainee chef, and they took away enough quality food to feed a couple of hundred orphans – and the contact details of farmers willing to donate tonnes more in the future. Tristram also organised a meeting in Parliament between MP Jaime Delgado and Managing Director of the Peru Food Bank to discuss support for the food bank’s campaign to change the tax regime around donations to stop the perverse incentive to destroy that exists at the moment.

A massive thank you to Jean Tromme and Alejandra Baruch, the organisers of the Mistura & Qaray food festival, who first invited Tristram to Peru – thus making possible a trip that became much more than just giving a talk.

Read the National Geographic article here.

A new European Commission (EC) report into unfair trading practices in the food supply chain published on 29/1 falls short in calling for mandatory action to ensure food suppliers such as farmers and small businesses are protected against abusive trade practices. The report comes off the heels of a recent UK Grocery Code Adjudicator (GCA) investigation that found Tesco guilty of of employing unfair trading practices by knowingly delaying payments to suppliers.

The EC report entitled, “Unfair Business-To-Business Trading Practices (UTPs) in the Food Supply Chain” is being described as a ‘missed opportunity’ by trade and food campaigners.  Rather than take the lead in stopping abusive business practices that impact many hardworking farmers, workers and businesses in Europe and beyond, the EC has passed responsibility to a voluntary initiative set up by the private sector and to EU Member States – known as the Supply Chain Initiative (SCI).

Feedback have been campaigning on this issue alongside organisations like TraidCraft and Fair Trade Advocacy Office, who are part of the Make Fruit Fair consortium. Fiona Gooch, Traidcraft Senior Policy Adviser said: “Just earlier this week, UK supermarket watchdog the Groceries Code Adjudicator found Tesco guilty of consistently under-paying suppliers or paying late in order to artificially inflate their profits. Tesco operates across Europe and their early membership of the voluntary Supply Chain Initiative did not deter these outrageous practices. Market information suggests that it is likely that other retailers have acted in a similar way to remain competitive. Inaction by the European Commission leaves suppliers exposed to unfair trading practices that include late payments, unilateral changes to contracts and the unfair shifting of risk onto suppliers.”

“Research shows that when supermarkets dump risk onto their suppliers in the form of delayed payments or additional costs, these risks are often passed on down the supply chain. This can ultimately lead to the exploitation of workers and producers in developing countries. For consumers, the effect of cut corners is less product innovation and a greater risk of things like the horsemeat scandal happening again.”

Feedback’s own investigations in countries like Kenya, Guatemala and Peru have uncovered how unfair trading practices practiced by retailers and their direct suppliers often have significant impacts on farmers in the Global South. When orders are cancelled at the last minute, or supply agreements are varied retrospectively farmers are often left with no market to sell their food to. Instead much of the food is wasted, and the farmers don’t get paid. Unfair trading practices like this are making it increasingly difficult for farmers to invest in their businesses as many are pushed into cycles of debt just so that they can pay their workers.

Rather than simply encouraging some improvements in the SCI, the EC should be taking concrete measures to protect indirect suppliers from gross abuses like last minute order cancellations. In order to effectively reduce UTPs we need a European directive to establish a minimum standard for enforcement bodies like the Groceries Code Adjudicator across Europe. These standards should include:

The ability for enforcers to initiate investigations to identify abuses within the supply chain and setting up anonymous complaints procedures;

Coordinated enforcement across the EU to discourage offenders from moving their purchasing department to low-enforcement countries to continue with UTPs;

The scope of enforcement should cover entire supply chain both inside Europe and overseas, from the sourcing of raw materials, to intermediate goods and the assembling of the final products and retailing. Access to complaint procedures must be made fully available to overseas suppliers, both indirect and direct;

Financial sanctions should be posed in the case of UTPs. Income generated from these sanctions should be ring-fenced to provide compensation to claimants for the financial losses incurred as result of the UTP.

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The GCA currently oversees the relationship between UK retailers and their direct suppliers. Feedback is part of the Groceries Code Action Network in the UK which is campaigning for the remit of this office to be extended to ensure protection for indirect suppliers.

The GCA is a landmark piece of legislation that was established to prevent unfair trading practices in the UK’s grocery sector. Crucially, the GCA and the code it oversees were created as a result of the inefficiency of a preceding voluntary code. The recent investigation by the GCA into Tesco’s mistreatment of its suppliers proves just how important this office is in uncovering and in due course preventing unfair trading practices from occurring.

The European Commission should learn from the UK’s experience with voluntary agreements and should move toward establishing legislative measures to prevent unfair trading practices, rather than solely relying on the SCI.

Today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Feedback Founder Tristram Stuart joined Champions 12.3 – a powerful new coalition of food waste fighters inspiring and leading action to reduce food waste around the globe.

Champions 12.3 aims to speed up action on meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3, which specifically seeks to halve per capita food waste and reduce food losses by 2030.  Having first proposed a 50% reduction target for food waste in his 2009 book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Waste Scandal, Tristram thinks:

“It is immensely satisfying that the global outcry against food waste, echoing throughout the supply chain, from farmers down to citizens, has now been amplified and crystallised by the United Nations in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is ambitious; it will be challenging but achievable; above all else, if we strive to work together, we can make the solutions to this colossal problem delicious and nutritious, helping to feed the world and save the planet in the one swoop.”

The coalition brings together an array of government ministers, global institution executives, civil society leaders and 30 CEOs. Champions 12.3 has an inspiring line-up of leaders such as:

Achim Steiner –Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme

Eva Kjer Hansen – Minister of Environment and Food, Denmark

Sam Kass – Senior Food Analyst at NBC News and former U.S. White House Chef

Liz Goodwin – Chief Executive Officer, Waste and Resources Action Programme.

Together these food waste fighting heroes will inspire ambition, mobilise action, and accelerate progress toward achieving SDG 12.3, creating more sustainable consumption and production habits around the globe.

The excitement of Champions 12.3  also takes place alongside the launch of a new food waste project – YieldWise – by The Rockefeller Foundation. YieldWise is a seven-year, $130 million initiative to demonstrate how food loss and waste can be cut in half globally. The Foundation’s President, Dr. Judith Rodin, is also a Champion 12.3. Feedback was an early grantee of the Rockefeller Foundation’s food waste initiative. Tristram adds, “we are immensely proud and extremely pleased that this has come to fruition in such a spectacular and thrilling way. We look forward to working with the Rockefeller Foundation to bring about their ambitious program to turn wasted harvests into a resource available to feed people and protect the planet”.

Food loss and waste has significant economic, social, and environmental consequences.  Globally, a third of all food is lost or wasted from farm to fork. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), food loss and waste amounts to $940 billion in global annual economic losses. Food waste also consumes about one quarter of all water used by agriculture, requires cropland area the size of China, and generates about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing food waste has an array of benefits from decreasing the negative impact of food production on the environment to saving money for farmers, companies, and households.

Please follow Champions 12.3 to keep up-to-date on their fight against food waste.

Toast Ale is a new craft beer created by Feedback Founder Tristram Stuart specially brewed using fresh surplus bread. Toast Ale has contracted the expert beer craftspeople at Hackney Brewery to make the initial batches.

Toast sources beautiful, fresh bread that would otherwise be wasted. The beer gives new life to artisan breads that are unsold by bakeries at the end of the day. The beer also finds a loving home for crust ends of loaves that are automatically discarded by sandwich manufacturers. Perhaps the best part about Toast Ale is that all profits from the sale go to us, Feedback!

Toast slices, toasts and mashes the bread to make breadcrumbs ready for the brewing process.  It’s brewed with malted barley, hops and yeast by master brewers in Hackney. The toasted bread adds caramel notes that balance the bitter hops, giving a malty taste similar to amber ales and wheat beers. Simply put, Toast is delicious.

Toast Ale is on a mission to prove that the alternative to waste is delicious.

To find out more about Toast watch the premier on Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast.

You can read further about Toast in: Vice Munchies, The Guardian, and The Independent.

You can get your hands on this delicious new craft brew by ordering directly from Toast. Toast is also available online from Craft Metropolis and Craft Rebellion.

If you’re in London, try it before you buy it. You can find Toast at the following London locations:

Clapton Craft E5, E5 Bakehouse, Hackney Brewery, The Cock Tavern, Mother Kellys and Earth Natural Foods.

Toast the best thing since… well, you know!

 What is EFFECT?

EFFECT (Europe Fights Food waste through Effective Consumer Training) is a two year European project, made possible through an Erasmus + grant awarded by the National Office in Poland. The aim of EFFECT is to develop an innovative multifunctional platform, hosting informative and educational content to raise awareness of food waste and encourage citizens to actively reduce their food waste footprint.

Our Plans:

Our objective is to develop ways for adults to easily learn about food waste, how it is caused and what they can do about it. We will do this through an innovative multifunctional platform, hosting informative and educational content to raise awareness of the food waste problem and encourage citizens’ involvement in the process of reducing their food waste footprint. The information will be tailored to individual adult learners and delivered through an innovative outreach strategy.

The platform will include:

1. Training materials: e-learning content links, check-lists, tips, etc.
2. Web-TV: hosting interesting short videos about food waste and solutions to reduce food waste footprint
3. A board game: available as an online game, for download and as a “do-it yourself construction” at home
4. Events to spread the word

   

Partners:

• Federation of Polish Food Banks (FPFB-PL)
• Food Bank in Olsztyn Olsztynie (FBO-PL)
• Eurocrea Marchant (IT)
• Avaca (GR)
• Feedback (UK)
• Universitat Autonoma De Barcelona (SP)

Follow us through our channels below and watch this space to keep updated…

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A new study published by Cambridge University reports that “feeding our food waste, or swill, to pigs (currently banned under EU law) could save 1.8 million hectares of global agricultural land – an area roughly half the size of Germany, including hundreds of thousands of acres of South America’s biodiverse forests and savannahs – and provide a use for the 100 million tonnes of food wasted in the EU each year.”

There’s a whole lot of things we need to face if we’re going to stop ourselves from major environmental disaster. One of those things is the food waste scandal, it’s outrageous, immoral and catastrophic for the changing climate. Feedback can be proud of its part in creating the public outcry on food waste; everyone is talking about it.

But there is something else we are still sticking our heads in the sand about: meat. Without a reduction in global meat consumption, it will be almost impossible to keep global warming below the ‘danger level’ of two degrees Celsius. Chatham House puts it this way in their recent study: “a shift to healthier patterns of meat-eating could bring a quarter of the emissions reductions we need to keep on track for a two-degree world.”

While reversing the global appetite for meat is crucial, there is something a little easier that can be done at the same time, and Feedback has been leading the way here too: it’s the Pig Idea. Simply put, the Pig Idea challenges the fact that our current food systems prioritises the feeding of animals over that of people by feeding virgin crops such as soy, maize and wheat to livestock. The inefficacy of this system is crazy: 36% of the world crops harvested are used as animal feed, but animal based food only delivers 12% of the calories of the world’s population.

Pigs are the ultimate food recycling machine and have eaten humankind’s food waste for thousands of years. Indeed, during both world wars it was illegal to feed pigs any food that was deemed fit for human consumption. Yet now the reverse is true. The current EU ban on feeding catering waste to pigs is a major legislative block to making our food system truly sustainable.

As the new study from Cambridge University identifies, feeding pigs kitchen left-overs can not only prevent vast amounts of food being lost from the supply chain (the average restaurant wastes 21.5 tonnes of food per year – sustainable restaurant association), but it can also dramatically offset the impacts conventional livestock feed is having on our planet and global food prices.

While we need to reduce the amount of meat we eat, it makes environmental and economic sense for pigs to eat more of it, at least in the form of our left-overs. And you don’t need to take Feedback’s word for it: the Cambridge University study “Where there is swill, there’s a way” (zu Ermgassen, 2015) shows without doubt how important the Pig Idea is for tackling climate change. Changing the EU legislation on animal feed for non-ruminants (like pigs and chickens) is a safe and cost-effective way to help address climate change.