04 November 2020
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Targets on wastage presented
UK SUSTAINABILITY charity WRAP will tomorrow (November 5th) publish its annual review for Courtauld Commitment 2025 (Courtauld 2025), the UK’s national voluntary agreement for the food and drink sector in the UK. This new report presents an overview of progress towards the industry targets on food waste prevention, water stewardship and carbon reduction, and how growers can play their part.
The report includes actions to improve food and drink sustainability by a huge range of organisations from across the supply chain, who have committed to work through Courtauld 2025 to reduce the environmental impact of food from farm to fork.
Some highlights include:
• In challenging times, the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap (which sets out the delivery plan for the Courtauld 2025 goals) saved 180kt of food (worth £300m) from becoming waste.
• The WRAP consumer campaign Love Food Hate Waste continues to break records for awareness. New brand Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date was launched to engage with citizens who have not yet made the link between wasted food and climate change.
• WRAP found almost four in five UK citizens (79%) undertook additional food management behaviours during lockdown, and these behaviours endured as lockdown eased as reflected in WRAP’s Food Waste Trends Survey reports.
• Revised Best Before guidance for surplus food redistribution and COVID-19 emergency surplus food grants got more food to those who need it most during the pandemic.
• The Guardians of Grub campaign for the hospitality & food service sector goes online with a new learning platform for tackling sector food waste – Guardians of Grub: Becoming a Champion.
• New supply chain greenhouse gas working group launched to help slash CO2e across the sector.
• Meat in a Net Zero world becomes the cross-industry vision to optimise meat productivity and minimise waste, from farm to fork.
• An estimated 750 million litres of water has been replenished back to nature as more than 80 food & drink businesses and 2,000 farmers engage on work to improve water stewardship.
This is an embargoed copy of the full report, which will be published tomorrow at 09.00am (Thursday 5 November). If you have any questions, or would like to speak to WRAP about details within please contact Carolyn Smith.
• This is a ‘non-reporting’ year for the Courtauld Commitment 2025 targets; the most recent figures on progress towards the targets were outlined in the Courtauld Commitment 2025 Milestone Progress Report published in January 2020.
• Throughout the pandemic, one of the sector’s strengths in responding to COVID-19 has been the volume of surplus food redistributed. Food that has made a real, positive difference to people’s lives. WRAP’s work since March has led to: £3.1m of emergency grant funding awarded to support redistribution organisations; the development of updated guidance including redistributing food beyond a ‘Best Before’ date, and freezing surplus food; and the Food Surplus Network - published last month - enabling businesses to identify redistribution partners that work in their location and with their type of business. With recent changes across all four nations, resources to support the redistribution of surplus food are more important than ever. These new resources and more are all available in one place for businesses.
WRAP is an environmental charity that works with governments, businesses and individuals to ensure that the world’s natural resources are used sustainably.
Image by Samuel Faber from Pixabay