Campaign group This is Rubbish (TiR) has today (15 May) called for mandatory food waste audits to be introduced to the food industry in order to reduce the amounts of uncessary waste .

The calls come off the back of the group’s ‘Counting What Matters’ report into food waste in the food industry. Based on research conducted among industry groups over a six-month period as part of its Industry Food Waste Audit Proposal, the report calls on the industry to improve its reporting of food waste and suggests that food waste audits could ‘significantly reduce waste in the food supply chain’.

TiR claims that the food industry is responsible for more than half of the 18-20 million tonnes of food thought to be wasted every year in the UK, and argues that the industry must be more transparent in its reporting of food waste if this problem is to be addressed. It claims this can prevent an accurate picture of the situation being formed and cites three previous Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) reports that were hampered by ‘gaps in data’.

TiR therefore argues for the introduction of a mandatory food waste audit (MFWAs), which would require businesses in the food industry to measure their food waste at regular intervals and report it to an external body. This would, it claims, ‘close [the] knowledge gap and strengthen preventative policies and action’.

Speaking before the parliamentary launch of the IFWAP research project today, TiR Co-director Caitlin Shepherd said: “We know the food industry has a big problem with waste, one that comes with significant environmental, social and economic costs. Despite this, food waste is not widely monitored or reported even among large businesses, meaning the problem stays largely hidden.”

“Greater transparency across long supply chains is generally desirable, as the recent horse meat scandal has clearly shown. As food prices rise, and people find it more difficult to make ends meet, we can no longer afford to waste half the food we produce.”

‘Increasing efficiency’ main benefit to business

The research was conducted by interviewing 20 members of the food industry, including small and large businesses across the supply chain, as well as policy experts from outside the industry.

The main benefit of an MFWA expressed by the interviewees was that of increasing efficiency, rather than ‘expressions about the intrinsic value of sustainable actions or audit’s ability to attract customers’. However, many raised concerns over the potential costs of conducting a MFWA.

Some respondents believed that a voluntary scheme would be preferable to a mandatory one because it would encourage business ‘buy-in’ and yield better results. However, a number of interviewees stated the opposite, arguing that a voluntary approach was ‘not enough’ to enact the necessary changes.

TiR itself argues that current voluntary agreements must be strengthened. It gives the example of the Courtauld Commitment 3, released on Thursday (9 May), which it denounces as ‘unambitious and unfocussed’ and lacking in urgency and industry participation.

Commenting on this, Beth Stuart, TiR Research Coordinator, said: “The food industry has had a chance to get on top of its food waste problem via voluntary agreements like the Courtauld Commitment, but these continue to lack urgency, ambition and uptake across supply chains.”

‘Significant structural change’ needed

TiR argues that food waste is ‘symptomatic of a food system under strain’, and that ‘significant structural change’ is needed to address the causes of food waste.

Indeed, this reflects the conclusion of the ‘Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not’ report released by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers earlier this year which argued that infrastructural changes, particularly those in the transportation of food, must be implemented, along with better training and educational resources.

Greater government intervention

As well as this, the ‘Counting What Matters’ report calls for greater government intervention to force companies that are not acting urgently enough into action. It claims that the current UK government is too ‘tentative’, and that ‘political citizenship’ is needed to enable citizens to act as monitors for the industry and encourage its greater sustainability.

Ultimately, it argues that the industry must be more transparent, both to display the true state of food waste in the industry and to give citizens access to accurate data. Without this, it argues that ‘a cultural norm of unaccountability and non-transparency is further embedded’.

Recommendations

The report therefore contains three main recommendations:

• strengthening current voluntary arrangements, as the TiR does not believe the Courtauld Commitment 3 is robust or ambitious enough, and that future voluntary agreements should be longer-term;
• establishing independent spot-checking of self-reported industry figures;
• implementing regulations if voluntary agreements fail;
• encouraging debate on how to change and improve food systems including greater citizen involvement.

TiR now plans to conduct research on a wider scale, including the catering industry, and work on ‘further research into the policy background surrounding the issue of regulatory intervention of the UK food industry’.

Read more about food waste in the supply chain in Resource 69 or read This is Rubbish’s ‘Counting What Matters’ report.