Tag: food waste

Evening Standard Publishes Food Waste Investigation

September 19, 2016

19/09/2016

Supermarkets are under pressure to accelerate action to prevent good food going to waste as the Evening Standard launches a major investigation into food waste this week.

Sainsbury’s is the second British supermarket to publish data on the amount of food it wastes in its stores, reporting to waste 35,832 tonnes per year. Last year Tesco published its in-store data after years of campaigning pressure from Feedback, and recently CEO David Lewis called on other retailers to follow their lead.

Feedback expose food waste in supermarket bins with the Evening Standard.
Feedback expose food waste in supermarket bins with the Evening Standard.

Feedback are pleased to see that Sainsbury’s has published its food waste data for the first time today but there’s still much work to be done. Firstly, Sainsbury’s have only published data on the amount of food waste generated in their stores. Whilst this is an important first step for retailers to manage and reduce their food waste, it does not include the much more significant amount of food waste generated in the retailer’s supply chain caused by cosmetic specifications, last minute order cancellations and unpredictable forecasting. Secondly,Sainsbury’s food waste data has not been audited by a third party, unlike its rival Tesco, putting the validity of this data in question.

Edd Colbert, Campaign and Research Manager at Feedback, says “Supermarkets are beginning to feel the pressure of the global food waste movement and have no option but to change their behaviour. The first dominos have fallen with Tesco and Sainsbury’s announcements and over the next year Feedback will be monitoring each of the supermarkets closely to ensure they go beyond ambitious gestures and commit to effective long term actions to prevent food waste.”

Feedback are calling on all UK supermarkets to come clean and publicly report on how much food they waste in their operations and throughout their supply chains. These businesses already have much of this data available as they collectively report on food waste through the Courtauld Commitment, a voluntary industry initiative. This was confirmed today by an anonymous employee from one of big six in the Evening Standard:

“The truth is that every store of every retailer measures their food waste very, very accurately because metrics drives our business. If they tell you otherwise they are being less than honest.”

The Standard’s investigation has largely focused on the amount of surplus food redistributed by each of the major retailers. Sainsbury’s is reported to lead the way with 7.6% of its surplus food actually being redistributed at present whilst Tesco comes second with 4.5%. The rest of the retailers fall even shorter with scores of 3.3% or less. Morrison’s and Lidl have not disclosed any information on how much food they redistribute. This is of particular concern, as Morrison’s declared almost a year ago that it planned to redistribute all of its surplus food after Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s BBC series Hugh’s War On Waste.

Whilst a great deal of attention is being given to redistribution initiatives, it is important to highlight that the amount of food waste generated within supermarket stores is miniscule compared to that which arises in the supply chain. If supermarkets are really serious about putting an end to waste they have to start taking responsibility for the waste they cause upstream by relaxing unnecessary cosmetic specifications, improving forecast accuracy, and putting an end to unfair trading practices.

Have you read the Evening Standard’s food waste story? Do you want to join the movement and help stop good food going to waste? Then sign the food waste pledge here to find how you can get involved.

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Foodrise call on UK Government to take action against food waste

September 19, 2016

Feedback have submitted a response to the British Government’s Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee inquiry on ‘Food Waste in England’. Read the full response here.

parsnips

The inquiry seeks to understand the social, economic and environmental impact of food waste at the household, retail, hospitality and local government levels. Feedback join other organisations, including the NFU and Friends of the Earth in calling for the scope of the inquiry to be wider and include a focus on food waste that arises in the supply chain, particularly at the farm level.

Disproportionate attention has been paid to food waste at the household level in England since the launch of the Waste Strategy in 2007. While this has led to significant reductions, primarily through the work of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign,  we believe that efforts to reduce food waste in the supply chain have been left on the side lines for far too long.

Part of the reason supply chain food waste has been neglected in the UK, and indeed at the international level[1], is due to the lack of data available. Farmers and other suppliers in the food system are not sufficiently incentivised to measure their food waste. Instead, waste caused by unfair trading practices such as order cancellations and rejections are something that many businesses just have to swallow, as they fear that complaining out about it could cause them to lose business.  Similarly cosmetic specifications that lead to ‘imperfect’ produce being wasted, has simply become the norm for many suppliers.

In order to seriously tackle food waste in England and across the United Kingdom, Feedback believes that the government must address the lack of transparent data on supply chain food waste and also tackle the current climate of fear in supermarket supply chains.

Beyond taking action to prevent food waste, the British Government must ensure the correct use of the food waste hierarchy is implemented by food businesses by reviewing the current ban on feeding catering waste to non-ruminant livestock to allow the development of an economic and robustly monitored food to feed industry, and by removing subsidies that prioritise waste management over waste prevention.

Feedback consider that legislation in the following five areas is necessary to effectively reduce food waste in England:

  • A UK national food waste reduction target

Alongside Scotland, the UK government should set a target for Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England to halve food waste across the supply chain (including pre retail food waste) by 2030, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development (UNSDG) Goal 12.3 to halve food waste globally by 2030.

  • Mandatory industry food waste reporting

The UK government should introduce legislation that makes public reporting of food waste data mandatory for food businesses over a particular size, including data on supply chains.  Making this data publicly available would increase competition between businesses generating positive results for consumers, retailers and suppliers.

  • Strengthening the remit of the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA)

The GCA is limited to regulating the relationship between retailers and their direct (first-tier) suppliers meaning that indirect suppliers are not protected from unfair trading practices (UTPs) that can cause overproduction and food waste. Feedback recommend that the GCA have their remit extended in order to protect indirect suppliers in the same way that direct suppliers are protected.

  • Removal of subsidies that incentivise sending edible food to anaerobic digestion

To ensure food waste prevention efforts take priority over anaerobic digestion (AD), in line with the food waste hierarchy, Feedback advocate that Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) are only available for the AD of non-edible food waste that is otherwise destined for landfill, and not any food waste that could be directed further up the hierarchy (as is the case with the Renewable Heat Initiative).

  • Revision of the ban on feeding catering waste to non-ruminant livestock

Feedback advocates the use of regulated, centralized, sophisticated catering waste treatment systems to ensure food waste can safely be used in feed for non-ruminants (pigs and chickens). Legislation is currently blocking such systems from being created that could simultaneously reduce food waste, create jobs, and significantly improve the environmental impact of meat production.

[1] The UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 seeks to halve food waste globally by 2030 at the household and retail level, whilst recommending efforts should also be made to reduce supply chain waste albeit without a measurable reduction target.

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Everyone agrees that food waste is a scandal; now citizens must hold the industry accountable

August 8, 2016

Hear ye, hear ye: Feedback’s Managing Director Niki Charalampopoulou is on Huffington Post’s RECLAIM front page today (8 August 2016) as a guest contributor.

Niki notes that food waste is an unusual dilemma in that there are no clear opponents of reducing food waste — and that it is for this reason that it takes a concerted effort to hold every stakeholder accountable, from policymakers to supermarkets and the greater food industry in general.

Feedback has been doing this since our founding in 2009. Niki specifically highlights the pledge we have asked people to sign this year to take #FoodWaste #OffTheMenu. Indeed, all of our campaigns centre on holding industry to account.

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Tell American supermarkets to stop using confusing date labels that cause food waste

July 20, 2016

In building our Feeding the 5000 campaign in the US, we developed a four-course menu of actions to take #FoodWaste #OffTheMenu. Our first course in this pledge is for simple date labels that don’t confuse people into throwing away food unnecessarily. On Monday July 18, we launched a petition to make this happen in the US, as part of Huffington Post’s #Reclaim campaign.

The one missing ingredient is a resounding public voice creating a mandate for this common-sense reform.

The US has seen a lot of noise on date label reform lately. See this article in the Economist, this video by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, and this article about our petition in Huffington Post. In addition to this increased awareness, concrete action is in the works on various fronts:

– Walmart has asked its private brand suppliers to adopt a standardized date label for all foods that do not require date labels for safety reasons.

– There are moves to pass federal legislation on this bipartisan issue of standardizing date labels to clear up the confusion

– Behind the scenes, the two key industry groups on this issue – the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute – have organized a working group with experts from manufacturing and retail companies to develop a voluntary industry standard for date labels.

We’re excited by all this noise and action. The one missing ingredient is a resounding public voice creating a mandate for this common-sense reform. Our hope is that this petition helps create this public mandate.

Help us promote the petition by tweeting

We’ve put together some sample tweets:

Supermarkets’ confusing date labels cause #FoodWaste. Take it #OffTheMenu with simpler #DateLabels change.org/datelabels

Sell by, best before, use by, consume by — no one agrees what these phrases mean. Reduce #FoodWaste, confusion change.org/datelabels

Support @Feedbackorg #reclaim petition calling for simpler #DateLabels to reduce #FoodWaste change.org/datelabels

Please also tweet @ the supermarkets themselves, especially if you are their customer:

What is the weirdest, silliest date labels that you can find?

Seen an especially weird, silly, or downright comical date label? Please email it to us or hit us up on instagram or Twitter.

But most importantly, please share and sign the petition

Petition sign now

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Brexit Government urged to take control of food, farming and fisheries for public good

July 14, 2016

Feedback have signed a letter alongside 83 other organisations to David Davis and Theresa May to stress the important implications of Brexit on food and farming.

Read the letter here.

With many of the UK’s food and farming policies and subsidies being defined at EU level, the UK government now has an opportunity to reshape these to ensure that taxpayers money is spent for public good.

Organisations representing the health and long-term interests of millions of British citizens have called on government to adopt common-sense food, farming and fishing policies that are good for jobs, health and the environment, when they plan for the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Concerns are expressed in a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May and David Davis MP, the Minister appointed to oversee a new Unit advising the Government and PM on the post EU Referendum strategy. The letter, co-signed by over 80 food, farming, fair trade, poverty, animal welfare, wildlife and environmental organisations, argues that good food, farming and fishing policies must be central to any post EU Referendum strategy for the UK.

The organisations point out that better food, farming and trade policies can help to cut greenhouse gas emissions from farming and food industries by 80% by 2050, and promote healthier diets to combat heart disease, cancers, diabetes and obesity, saving the NHS, and ultimately taxpayers millions. Such policies can also support a vibrant and diverse economy, supporting good jobs and working conditions, in the UK and overseas. Further, the UK could prioritise ethical and sustainable production methods, improved animal welfare, more farmland and marine wildlife, a healthy future for bees and other pollinators, as well as enhancing the beauty of the countryside and protecting the environment, whilst also providing a safe and traceable food supply.

Kath Dalmeny, head of Sustain, an alliance of food and farming organisations,  who coordinated the letter, said: “The British public has given no mandate for a reduction in food and farming standards, a weakening of protection for nature, nor a reversal of the UK’s commitment to lifting millions of the poorest people in the world out of poverty through trade. We are seriously concerned that such vital considerations may be over-run by a drive for new trade deals at any cost.”

The full letter can be read online here.

Organisations that have signed the letter include:

Action on Sugar, Agricultural Christian Fellowship, Alexandra Rose Charity, All Party Parliamentary Group: Agroecology, All Party Parliamentary Group: School Food, Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, Baby Milk Action, Banana Link, Belfast Food Network, Beyond GM, Biodynamic Association, Blood Pressure UK, Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Concern Universal, Consensus Action on Salt and Health, Compassion in World Farming, Eating Better Alliance, Econexus, Environmentalists for Europe, Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK), Royal College of Surgeons, Faculty of Public Health, Fairtrade Foundation, Family Farmers’ Association, Federation of City Farms &Community Gardens, Feedback, First Steps Nutrition Trust, Food Ethics Council, Food Foundation, Food Matters, Food Research Collaboration, City University, Food Systems Academy, Forum for the Future, Friends of the Earth , Fun Kitchen, Future Sustainability, Garden Organic, Global Justice Now, GM Freeze, Greenpeace, Green Party of England and Wales, Harper Adams University (Food Science & Agri-Food Supply Chain Management), Health Equalities Group, Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour, Institute of Health Promotion and Education, International Pole & Line Foundation, Keep Britain Tidy, Landworkers Alliance, London Food Board, Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE), New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association , Magic Breakfast, Marine Conservation Society (MCS), National Obesity Forum, New Economics Foundation, Nourish Scotland, Organic Growers Alliance, Organic Research Centre, Organic Trade Board, Pasture Fed Livestock Association, Pesticides Action Network UK, Real Farming Trust, Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, School of Artisan Food, School Food Matters, Schumacher College at Dartington Hall Trust, Scottish Cancer Prevention Network, Scottish Crofting Federation, Send a Cow, Soil Association, Soil Association Scotland, Sole of Discretion, Slow Food in the UK, Sugarwise, Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming, Sustainable Food Cities Network, Sustainable Food Trust, Traidcraft, UK Food Group, UK Health Forum, Unite the Union, UNISON, University of Cardiff, Geography & Planning & Development, War on Want, Wildlife Trusts.

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European Parliament calls for action to tackle unfair trading practices

June 8, 2016

More protection for farmers urged as EU resolution calls for legislation to cut down on abuse of power within the food supply chain

07/06/2016

 

Yesterday morning, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) sent a clear message to the EU Commission to take immediate action and enact  EU-wide legislation that protects farmers and food suppliers who are  mistreated by supermarkets’ unfair trading practices (“UTPs”).

The resolution (approved by 600 votes to 48) calls on the Commission to establish a network of enforcement authorities to address power imbalances in the food supply chain that generate increased risk and uncertainty for suppliers and can lead to overproduction and food waste.

 

Europe’s food supply chain suffers from endemic and persistent problems from UTPs, with suppliers subjected to a range of issues including delayed payments, sudden and unjustified order cancellations, forced involvement in promotions and imposed charges for fictitious services.

 

farmer1update

Feedback’s research in Kenya has shown how farmers who export their produce to Europe are forced into cycles of debt when orders are cancelled at the last minute or supply agreements are changed retrospectively. Farmers are often left with no market to sell their food to meaning they are not paid and end up wasting perfectly good produce.

 

The resolution comes after the Commission published a disappointing report earlier this year favouring voluntary agreements to prevent UTPs over legislative measures. In its report the Commission stated that the industry-led Supply Chain Initiative (SCI) was a sufficient measure to prevent UTPs.

 

The European Parliament have also criticised the Commission’s preference for the SCI, with MEPs agreeing that the voluntary initiative “cannot be used as an effective tool to combat UTPs” given that it lacks financial penalties and mechanisms to allow for confidential complaints to be made by suppliers. This issue is compounded by the fact that Tesco, despite being a member of the SCI, was recently found guilty by the UK’s Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) of using unfair trading practices against suppliers and producers in an attempt to overstake its profit margins.

 

Suppliers currently operate in a ‘climate of fear’, too scared to speak out about against unfair trading practices, and require anonymous complaint systems such as the UK’s GCA in order to speak freely. However, the GCA currently only regulates the relationship between retailers and their direct suppliers, meaning that many suppliers are left without protection. The European Parliament recommend that the GCA should be used as a model enforcer against UTPs, but goes further by recognising that UTPs can occur across the supply chain irrespective of geographical location.

 

Voluntary initiatives such as the SCI and the Supermarkets Code of Practice that preceded the GCA are structurally unsuitable for preventing unfair trading practices. Legislation is necessary to effectively deter retailers from using these practices and to effectively change the behaviour or purchasers within these companies. There is clear public support for this, as a petition started by Feedback calling on national leaders to establish authorities to investigate supermarkets’ unfair treatment of suppliers received over one million signatures last year.

 

“Unfair trading practices exist because they are profitable in the short-term for retailers, yet in the long run they threaten the sustainability of our food system by placing additional pressures on increasingly squeezed suppliers,” said Edd Colbert, Campaign and Research Manager for Feedback, “the call for EU-wide protection against unfair trading practices is a significant step forward in the fight against food waste and Feedback join the European Parliament in demanding that the Commission takes action urgently”

 

Feedback have been working with allies in the European food movement to make sure unfair trading practices are recognised as a major contributor to food waste in the supply chain. As an organisation we have engaged with key policy makers in the Commission and Parliament to put this issue on their agenda to create a fairer food system for all. Read more about Feedback’s Stop Dumping campaign that aims to stop unfair trading practices that lead to good food being wasted here.

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Starving pigs and bankrupt farmers: how food waste can help

May 3, 2016

Save Kitchen Waste to Feed the pigsLast week 400 pigs were found starved to death in the Netherlands as it appears their bankrupt farmer had given up on them. This is just one example of many, alarming animal welfare and farmer organisations alike.

In the first three months of 2016 alone, five Dutch pig farmers went bankrupt, almost as much as the total figure for 2015. Earlier this year, agriculture experts warned that Britain’s pig farmers are also braced for a horrendous year, as a glut of pork on the global markets sends prices plunging.

In addition to the impact on farmers themselves, animal welfare suffers too. The need to keep costs down results in terribly overcrowded and stressful conditions which in turn lead to antibiotics overuse.

The cost of feed is a major issue. In 2015, feed made up 56% of total expense for pig farmers in the UK (and as much as 65% in Ireland). At the same time, our friends at the Japan Food Ecology Centre produce nutritious and safe pig feed from food waste at half the cost of conventional feed.

What more incentive do we need to urgently create centralised industrial treatment systems to safely convert kitchen left-overs to pig feed? These systems need to be underpinned by sound legislation guaranteeing the microbiological safety of the resulting feed, and incentives to ensure the enormous environmental benefits are realised too.

At Feedback, together with our research partners of the REFRESH programme we are working hard to clarify existing guidance, so that more currently permissible surplus food and by-products replace expensive virgin feed crops like soya.

We are also furthering collaborations with scientists to confirm the exact treatment specifications to guarantee the safety of feed made from catering waste. We hope that the plight of farmers and pigs alike will encourage governments and the industry to urgently prioritise this work themselves. We’d be all too happy to join forces.

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Campaign update Food Waste

Campaign win: Tesco changes rules on Kenyan green beans to cut food waste

Campaigning win as Tesco improves wasteful process of 'top and tailing' green beans
April 21, 2016

After years of public campaigning and direct challenges to its practices, Tesco has announced changes to its rules on Kenyan green beans. From now on, they will stop forcing their suppliers to “top and tail” their produce. Tesco estimates that this change will save more than 135 tonnes of food waste per year. Foodrise had uncovered this wasteful practice through its investigations in Kenya in 2013, the findings of which we outlined in a report that we published in 2015. Since our inception, Foodrise has publicly campaigned against cosmetic specifications for produce that outgrade outrageously high percentages of nutritious crops. Tesco was no exception, and we directly challenged them to stop their wasteful “topping and tailing” practice.

In the fight to relax cosmetic standards, green beans have been a particularly potent symbol of these standards’ causal link to food waste. Supermarkets like Tesco mandated that suppliers “top and tail” their produce — the idea being to make sure all green beans were the exact same length. Unfortunately, that’s not the way green beans grow, and topping and tailing led to an estimated 30% of the crop being lost before it even arrived in the aisles of British supermarkets.

In 2014, our public campaigning led Tesco to make a change to this system, trimming only one side of the green beans. This change alone saved one supplier whom we interviewed 1/3 of her harvest. We continued working directly with Kenyan farmers over the next two years. We found that cosmetic specifications were often used by retailers and importers as a front for cancelling orders at the last minute, that over 30% of food was being rejected at farm-level, and that exporters reported nearly 50% of produce is rejected before being exported. Our work in Peru has shown similar shocking levels of supply-chain waste driven by importers and retailers’ buying practices.

After years of publicly campaigning on this issue as well as directly challenging Tesco to make this change, we celebrate Tesco’s recent buying policy change as a victory for Kenyan farmers, British consumers, and the environment. Come this May, we host major Feeding the 5000 events in New York City and Washington D.C., where we will be asking US supermarkets to follow Tesco’s lead on this issue. The goal is for retailers to relax cosmetic standards dramatically and use farms’ whole crop. Tesco says it will begin doing this: “If there is a surplus, we will work with suppliers to find an outlet – for example, by connecting our growers with our fresh and frozen suppliers for it to be used in foods such as ready meals,” said Tesco Commercial Director for Fresh Food Matt Simister. This should be the norm across all retailer-supplier relationships.

We want all retailers around the world to make simple changes like this to create a more sustainable food system. At the same time, we continue fighting for more just and less wasteful supply chains worldwide. Green beans are just a start.

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The Future is Bright: Feedback and FoodCycle are partnering!

March 15, 2016

from farm to forkWe have been sitting on this for a little while, so we are absolutely over the moon to officially announce we are teaming up with FoodCycle on the new From Farm to Fork project.

Together the programme will train over 4,000 young people to reclaim surplus food through gleaning and to cook this food for vulnerable people.

Our Bright Future

The initiative, funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s ‘Our Bright Future’ programme, will support 18-24 year olds to get involved and make a difference in their local area.

Through Feedback’s Gleaning Network, young people will collect some of the thousands of tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables that are wasted on farms every year across the UK because they do not meet strict cosmetic standards.

Young people then volunteer with FoodCycle, a national charity that uses surplus food to cook three-course nutritious tasty meals for people at risk of food poverty and loneliness. Volunteers and guests sit down together to share a meal – and for many guests, this is the one chance they have each week to eat with and have a conversation with others.

foodcycleWho is FoodCycle and what do they do?

FoodCycle runs volunteer-powered community projects across the UK – all working to reduce food poverty and social isolation by serving tasty, nutritious meals to vulnerable people. The charity combines volunteers, surplus food and spare kitchen spaces to create tasty, nutritious meals for people at risk of food poverty and social isolation. With 24 projects across the UK now, FoodCycle operates under the simple idea that food waste and food poverty should not coexist.

Since starting cooking in May 2009, FoodCycles’ incredible volunteers have served over 125,000 meals made using over 146,000kg of surplus food – the equivalent saving of 657,000kg CO2 emissions. Find out more about FoodCycle on their website.

Sounds amazing! How can I get involved?

Are you aged 18-24 and looking to make a difference? Through From Farm to Fork, you will develop important skills, reconnect with farmers and the countryside, create positive social and environmental change and play an important role in supporting your local community. Stay tuned as we’ll be updating our Facebook page and this space with more details. secondary_vert__nostrap_rgb

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EU Circular Economy Package Doesn’t go far Enough on Food Waste

December 2, 2015

The European Commission’s Circular Economy package announced today falls short in the measures it proposes to tackle food waste; despite the European Commission’s earlier indication that the new package was going to be stronger and further reaching than its predecessor.

Food production is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, species extinction, and deforestation – yet one third of all that production and its impacts goes to waste. In spite of this, national targets to reduce food waste by 30% between 2017 and 2025 proposed in the earlier package have been dropped.

parsnips

To tackle the staggering level of global food waste, action must be taken. Feedback recommended not only maintaining the EC’s targets, but broadening them to include food waste on farms. The FAO estimates that nearly two thirds of Europe’s food waste occurs between production and retail levels, and only one third at consumer level. Yet the new EC package lets the food industry completely off the hook for their two thirds by refocussing the EC’s calls around the Sustainable Development Goals, which only have specific targets to reduce retail and consumer waste.

Policy recommendations proposed by Feedback during the EC’s public consultation on the circular economy included:

– Empower agencies to crack down on unfair trading practises by retailers, which create upstream food waste. The UK’s Groceries Code Adjudicator has demonstrated the effectiveness of using economy-friendly competition law to simultaneously reduce failures in the market and food waste.

– Incentivise and remove barriers to redistribution of surplus food;

– Redress perverse financial incentives that encourage the use of food waste for biogas production when options higher in the food waste hierarchy, such as feeding people or livestock, would be the better environmental option.

– Remove or relax regulations on cosmetic standards on fruit and vegetables which contributes to food waste both in Europe and beyond.

– Review legislative barriers to safely use food waste as livestock feed to improve Europe’s food security, reduce costs to farmers and create jobs in the “Eco-feed” industry livestock;

SaveKitchenWaste

Never before has there been such a unified and massive public mandate to act against food waste. Over one million people have signed Feedback’s Avaaz petition calling for national leaders to launch national action plans to prevent waste, including passing laws obliging supermarkets publish their waste data, and to establish authorities to investigate supermarkets’ unfair treatment of suppliers that lead to waste. Over 700,000 people have signed the Change.org petition, sponsored by Feedback in the UK, calling for the European Commission to require big supermarkets to donate food to charities rather than destroy perfectly good food as part of the Circular Economy Strategy.

There is strong political support for action to prevent food waste as well, most notably demonstrated by the Green Card issued earlier this year by Lord Boswell and signed by 16 member states, calling on the Commission to “adopt a strategic approach to the reduction of food waste within the EU” within the Circular Economy package.

The EC has effectively ignored its own recommendations from commissioned research from 2010 which suggested that ‘Food waste data reporting requirements’ was in the top three recommendations for reducing EU food waste. Removing food waste reduction targets is a regressive move. Furthermore, it presents a missed opportunity to maximize the effectiveness of the Commission’s €9 million funding of the Resource Efficient Food and Drink for Entire Supply Chain initiative (REFRESH) earlier this year. REFRESH, of which Feedback is a core partner, is a consortium of organisations working to find solutions to Europe’s food waste issue that would lead to a more circular economy with the aim of contributing to the reduction of food waste by 30% by 2025.

The EC’s lack of ambition is all the more disappointing in view of the tide of public support for measures to tackle food waste and positive signs of government action within the EU at national level. Governments in Belgium, France, Spain and UK have taken forthright steps to tackle this problem through legislation, showing that national efforts are slowly being realised. With several years of concerted, collaborative effort, the UK is on track to beat the Sustainable Development Goal adopted by the UN in September of halving food waste by 2030. Each member state should set itself such a target, and the EC should be leading the charge. Organisations involved in bringing about change, such as WRAP and Feedback, are willing to put all the know-how built up over several years at the disposal of governments to help other countries halve their food waste even faster than the UK. Feedback pledges to open source all its knowledge – to give away its’ intellectual property to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Feedback believe together swift transformation can be achieved.

The EU still has a chance to show it has significance in the global fight against food waste. The draft package on the circular economy is not up to the job. Feedback look to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers to strengthen it.

 

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If you eat, you’re in!

November 27, 2015

Calling all food waste warriors: Join us at the climate march!

If food waste were a country it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases- just after the US and China.

Food waste squanders natural resources like water, energy and land. It also needlessly produces greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the largest contributors to climate change.  We need your help to show just how large the problem is and that the solutions are tasty!

Feedback, together with other anti food waste organisations such as This is Rubbish and Olio, will be forming the food waste warriors bloc to take to the streets of London this Sunday, 29 November at the People’s March for Climate Justice and Jobs. We will be joining other food and agriculture organisations to make our voices heard before the COP 21 commences on Monday.

Join the food waste revolution! Join the Food Waste Bloc at the Climate March and don’t miss out on this epic day.

More event details here.

Don’t forget to share on Facebook and invite your friends!

HELP! Let’s redistribute these tasty apples rescued by our fab Gleaning Network UK.

Epic Apple Giveaway – volunteers needed

Every year around the globe 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted, that’s one-third of all food that’s produced for human consumption. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Solutions to climate change DO exist, beginning with putting a stop to food waste.

In order to highlight the tasty solutions to food waste, we will be handing out thousands of delicious apples that would have otherwise been wasted to demonstrators and the general public. The apples were rescued by our amazing Gleaning Network UK team.

We need volunteers to help hand them out! Email pascale@foodrise.org.uk if you would like to help.

 

climate march FINAL

We hope to see you this Sunday. If you eat you’re in!

#fightfoodwastefriday

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Pledging Support in the Food Waste Fight

November 13, 2015

Pledge Central

farmer2updateWith the release of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s second episode of the hard-hitting BBC1 documentary – Hugh’s War on Waste – UK food waste has been thrust onto the public agenda. The outcry for supermarkets to tackle the vast amount of food waste they generate is deafening. Hugh’s Pledge of Support broke the internet on Monday with well over 200,000 signatures. The Stop the Rot Campaign calling on supermarkets to commit to ambitious targets to reduce their own stores’ and their manufacturing suppliers’ food waste by 30% by 2025 is experiencing massive support with over 180,000 signatures.

Finally, the petition for Feedback’s Stop Dumping Campaign has amassed over 1 million signatures! We are calling on national leaders and ministers to:

Pass laws obliging supermarkets to donate unsold food and publish their waste data, as well as to establish authorities to investigate supermarkets’ unfair treatment of suppliers, such as dumping waste onto farmers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Help keep this amazing momentum alive. Share these very important pledges with your family and friends:

Stop Dumping

Stop the Rot

Hugh’s Appeal

Don’t forget to read more about what Feedback’s been working on in our latest newsletter.

In the News…

There have been some fantastic food waste stories in the news this week:

parsnip in armsFeedback’s Edd Colbert found a treasure trove of perfectly edible luxury food dumped outside a local Waitrose branch. You can see loads of fantastic photos and read all about the dumpster diving expedition in the Daily Mail.

In The Times this week, Feedback Founder Tristram Stuart discusses using food no longer fit for human consumption as fodder for livestock. You can read the article here: Using Pigs in the Fight Against Food Waste 

Look forward to another update next week from #fightfoodwastefriday!

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