stoptherot2015-blog

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Courtauld 2025 needs to aim higher

Stop the Rot campaign praises Courtauld 2025 for including food waste on farms in the agreement, but challenges it to go further. 

Today, plans for the fourth iteration of the Courtauld Commitment were announced. Representing 98 signatories, the agreement reaches across ten years and has pledged commitment to;

20% food waste reduction by 2025

20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions created by the food and drink industry

A reduction in impact associated with water use in the supply chain3

Those pledging commitment to the voluntary targets include 24 local authorities, including the London Water and Recycling Board, and major brands and manufacturers such as Coca-Cola, Nestle and Pizza Hut. 

Coordinated and managed by Waste Resource Action Programme (WRAP), working on behalf of the government and devolved powers in Wales and Scotland, the organisation hailed the deal as the first of its kind and said it would usher in a “new era” for the industry. 

Stop the Rot recognises the ambition of the deal, and congratulate WRAP in the inclusion of ambitious food waste reduction targets, and working towards measuring farm level food waste by 2018. However, we call for the commitment to go further and include;

Sufficiently ambitious food waste reduction targets for manufacturing and retail level waste – 30% reduction by 2025 (ideally against 2016 baselines), bringing it to approximately 2.8 million tonnes.  Causes of food waste to be audited, and responsibility assigned accordingly. Third party to arbitrate investment by companies in reducing food waste in their supply chains, and distribute the extra profits from these efficiency savings fairly between buyer and supplier.

To add your voice to our petition, and support Stop the Rots call for Courtauld 2025 to up the ante, and include a 30% reduction target in supply chain food waste by 2025 visit change.org.

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France legislates on food waste – Is UK next?

France has brought through a momentous piece of legislation forcing supermarkets to give away unsold food, and banning them from destroying any food products fit for consumption.

French local councilor Arash Derambarsh and endorser of Stop the Rot campaign said this is ‘a historic victory’ and highlighted that ‘it is extremely rare for a law to be passed so quickly and with unanimous support���. Derambarsh’s ‘Manifeste contre le gaspillage’ has been pushing the issue of food waste in the French Assembly, and Arash himself speaks from his own personal experience of going hungry while a student living off £280 a month.

This campaign has only been running since December 2014, but Arash’s tireless efforts to integrate social action, public mood and political will have made it incredibly swift and effective. This law will include education programmes for schools and businesses and feed into France’s plan to reduce food waste by 50% by 2025.

Originally introduced as an amendment into the law for ‘Energy Transition’ in April 2015, the food waste element was then dropped in August due to late submission . The resubmission has now been given the green light with unanimous support across political divides. Now Arash has set his sights on an EU level regulation on food waste in supermarkets.

But, how did they get here and what about us in the UK?

The UK is seen by many in Europe to be a leader on food waste policies; this is more a reflection of the weakness of regulation in Europe than of a strong-arm UK. Our national voluntary commitment, the Courtauld Commitment is seen by industry actors to be an international example, but this leaves a lot of space for wriggle-room on food waste obscuring targets behind broader packaging targets and pushing responsibility on to consumers and producers wherever possible.

France has experienced a shift in recent years as public mood has shifted around regulation and restrictions on ugly fruit and veg, which was emphasized by the Intermarche campaign les fruite et legumes moches combining healthy eating campaigns with irregular shaped fruit and veg.

As we start to question the perfection of fruit and vegetables in the UK too, we need powerful campaigns like this to capture public mood. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s War on Waste campaign is highlighting the inaction of UK supermarkets on this issue.

What is most compelling about this French regulation is the unanimous cross-party support. Here in the UK we are seeing a similar reaction in government, food waste is an issue of resource efficiency and business as much as it is one of justice and welfare, and this is bringing all sides of the political divide together. Much of the power in the UK movement on food waste resides in action against poverty and food bank redistribution, just yesterday the latest Feeding Britain report detailed the extent of this issue across the nation. It is naturally common sense to see this excessive waste at supermarket level and connect it with an urgent need with a growing number of UK citizens in poverty.

In France the Manifeste contre le gaspillage is only dealing with the food wasted at the point of sale, something very tangible for the public, but as our campaign highlights; retailer in-store food waste is very low in the mix of wastes through the supply chain (BRC suggest 1.3%). The important thing is to note the responsibility for causing the waste, something that the Big 4 UK supermarkets have an enormous power over.

The protestation of supermarket representatives in France reminds us of the responses of UK supermarkets who tussle to avoid any form of government and public involvement in their affairs. Supermarkets operate largely outside of regulatory mechanisms in the UK, and we can see from a 78% reduction in plastic bag use inside 2 months, regulation works. The power of this move in France demonstrates a first step on the long road to reigning in the corporate excesses of our big food businesses.

Currently, Kerry McCarthy MPs ‘Food Waste (Reduction) Bill’ is moving through parliament with supporters on all sides of the political spectrum seeing sense on firm action on food waste. This bill goes for a Second Reading in Parliament on the 29th January, you can ask your MP to support the motion and start a shift towards what France have achieved this week.

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Stop the Rot Take Massive Skip Straight to the Source

On Friday, Stop the Rot seized the opportunity to take over 190,000 signatures to the front door of the major supermarkets. But we also had a surprise for them - we brought a skip-load of food waste to Sainsburys and Tesco headquarters too, to signify the colossal 7 million tonnes of food wasted before it gets to the consumer. We delivered 193,000 voices calling on the Big Four supermarkets to take ambitious action to urgently reduce their supply chain food waste. In the lead up to the historic Paris climate change negotiations, we brought the message that if food waste were a country it would be the 3rd largest emitter of carbon globally. Tescos sent down their head of CSR to meet us, who cancelled his other plans to receive the petition. Tescos have agreed to meet us next week to discuss our campaign asks. These are very encouraging signs – but let’s keep up the pressure to ensure that Tescos aren’t all show, and deliver by signing up to concrete ambitious targets and more transparent supply chains when we meet next week. At Sainsburys, we were met with police, and were barred by security guards from entering the building – we were not allowed to present the petition to any Sainsburys representatives. However, having initially turned us down, after our stunt Sainsburys have now agreed to also meet us next week, so they are beginning to bow to pressure.

In the run up to these talks, we need your help. We need Tescos and Sainsburys to really feel the pressure from the public to act, so that when we meet with them next week, they feel impelled to act to stop supply chain food waste. Tweet @ Tesco and Sainsbury's with your own message or using #stoptherot Here’s some example tweets for some inspiration! @Tesco Sign up to ambitious targets to reduce supply chain #foodwaste in meetings with #StoptheRot next week! change.org/stoptherot @Sainsburys Why did you reject 193,000 strong petition 4 you to reduce #foodwaste? #Stoptherot in meeting next week! change.org/stoptherot Together we can hold them to account on food waste!

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It’s time for Supermarkets to Stop the Rot

Now more than ever it is vital that public pressure is kept on the Big Four Supermarkets and the overarching voluntary food waste reduction framework The Courtauld Commitment.

Courtauld 2025 is a ten year plan to reduce food waste and increase supply chain resource efficiency in general is currently being developed. 53 big businesses subscribe to this framework, so it has significant industry reach and impact. It is also a significant framework, as previously the commitment has been reworked every three years. This iteration sees a plan devised and according ambitious to stretch over the next ten years.

Following Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s War on Waste series, the Big Four supermarkets have started to act up on tackling food waste. Changes include Morrisons declaration to donate all surplus food to charity instead of throwing it in the bin.   Meanwhile Asda announced just two days before the show that it was going to launch a new range of wonky fruit and vegetables.

Sainsbury’s states that it minimises food waste through a whole range of internal stock management processes. These include using brand tiers to utilise as much of the crop as possible and avoid waste within the fruit and vegetable supply chain.  They also claim to deliver surplus to charity, something they have been doing since 1998.

Tesco are slightly ahead of the game, and the only supermarket to publish it’s food waste figures, and conduct food waste hotstpot analysis on their 25 most popular products. We commend this, and call for the other Big 4 to follow their lead and announce how much food is wasted in their supply chain, and conduct detailed food waste hotspots on most popular products.

Here at Stop the Rot we applaud the work done by the supermarkets. However, wonky fruit and veg ranges, and redistribution of surplus to food poverty charities is not enough.

The Big Four supermarkets control our high street and our personal food buying choices. They account for 71.6% ownership of the grocery market in the UK. It is time they open up and publish the quantities of food waste across their whole supply chain, including farm level. After all you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

We call on Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons to follow Tesco and food waste hotspot their most popular products, and then figure out how to make reductions once they identify where and how food waste is happening.

As our petition calling for supermarkets to commit to ambitious food waste reduction targets nears 200,000 supporters,  the EU is eroding  commitments to reducing food waste by 30% by 2025. Corporate transparency and responsibility must be shown. Food waste is the symptom of a broken system, and one that relies on secrecy and corporate lobbying to prioritise economic efficiencies over environmental and social justice.

Join Stop the Rot, and call on the Big Four supermarkets to

·   regularly publish their in-store and supply chain's food waste data, including collaborating to measure food waste on farms by 2018 to enable targeted reduction.

·   commit to ambitious targets to reduce their own stores' and their manufacturing suppliers’ food waste by 30% by 2025

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EU Drops Food Waste Targets

Last week a key document was leaked, showing just how weak aspirations have become within the EU. This is a major change, negatively affecting EU wide efforts to tackle food waste in a measurable, ambitious and systematic way. 

Before we go into more detail, here’s a little bit of history. In 2011 the EC’s Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe stated a milestone of halving edible food waste to disposal by 2020 . Following that the EP passed a resolution ‘to take practical measures towards halving food waste by 2025’.

More ambitious targets of 30% reduction by 2025 were then put in place, and were factored into projects such as the EU Horizon 2020 funded “Resource Efficient Food and Drink for the Entire Supply Chain” (REFRESH), which launched earlier this year . This project resulted in twenty-six partners from 12 European countries and China agreeing to work towards the project’s goal to contribute towards the EU objectives of reducing food waste across Europe by 30% by 2025, reducing waste management costs, and maximising the value from unavoidable food waste and packaging materials. However it seems that this target is no longer the overarching goal, due to changes in the EU’s Circular Economy Package. 

So what has happened to see the erasure of this very important aspiration? The most recent draft of the EU’s circular economy legislative proposal has significantly weakened commitments to reduce food waste. The language is vague and not anchored to timeframes or targets. Countries are asked to curb food waste, and nothing more. This is not simply down to policy makers, but effected by the power of the corporate lobby. 

“Corporate lobbying appears to have watered down the best ambitions for the circular economy concept,” said Eve Mitchell of Food and Water Europe.

The original circular economy directive was seen by campaigners as a breakthrough for resource efficiency. By 2025, it would have phased out landfill dumping and imposed a 90% recycling rate for paper.

By 2030, EU states would have to work to reduce food waste by 1/3 and recycle 70% of their municipal waste, 80% of product packaging, 60% of plastic packaging, 60% of plastics, 80% of wood and 90% of ferrous metals, aluminium and glass. 

But the package was withdrawn by the incoming EU president, Jean-Claude Juncker, after industry protests. The backlash that provoked from environmentalists led Juncker’s deputy, Frans Timmermans, to promise a revised proposal that would be “broader, more ambitious [and] more effective”.

We at Stop the Rot, think the omitting of such targets from the current draft of the circular economy legislation demonstrates a clear failure to prioritise the address of reducing industry food waste. We continue to put pressure on the big supermarkets to publicly commit to reporting on and reducing supply chain food waste. Specifically we want the Big 4 to 

Commit to help their manufacturers reduce food waste by 30% by 2025

measure farm-level waste by 2018 so that targets can be set to reduce this

Take responsibility to help their supply chain reduce waste, and produce Three-yearly interim reports to be report on this (as in Courtauld). 

Follow Tesco in publishing in-store food waste data annually, and publish food waste data for key hotspot products across their whole supply chains equal to at least 50% of their sales, with updates every 3 years to track progress.

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Food Waste: The Next Horsemeat?

A week of spotlighting the wasteful excesses of our food system has left us with many questions to answer.

The emotion that has surfaced from the bottom of a pile of parsnips must not be overlooked as a short-term flash in the pan. It simply is not. Such despairing outcry from the public surfaces in other ways, most recently it can be seen in breaches of trust such as the Horsemeat Scandal in 2013. Such events can rip the system wide open and they are the inevitable result of a public kept in the dark while corporate interests take precedence.

The latest public victims of the corporate food system are the family at Tattersett’s farm whose parsnip farm livelihood has gone under in some measure due to the 20 tonnes of weekly waste that is outgraded due to stringent supermarket cosmetic standards. A murky supply chain has been largely convenient for big supermarkets who can dress up systematic injustice, environmental destruction and global trade as whatever cultural vogue is selling at the time. But certain events flip that comfort zone wide open; what Horsegate showed us was that we citizens are not alone in our ignorance of what goes on down the food supply chain, our supermarkets knew next to nothing too.

Since 2013 we have seen supermarkets tighten their leaky supply chains, they likely know more now than they have for years, the establishment of a Food Crime Unit may bring some regulatory clout along with Chris Elliott’s outstanding investigations into the key forces that led to such an irruption. Some supermarkets suffered heavily, Tesco infamously had 100% horse in some beef mince products; while others were bolstered, Morrison’s ownership of slaughterhouses and UK livestock links gave them unrivalled clarity in a sea of doubt.

Two years on, there is an implicit assumption that supermarkets have got this one covered. Perhaps they have. Yet we, the public, know little more about the food supply chain beyond a feeling of disquiet and mistrust.

As new issues, such as food waste, rise up in people’s priorities, so the food system must adapt. If our supermarkets claim they have unrivalled knowledge of what goes in and out of their food supply chain then by default they should know what they are wasting. Tesco reportedly conducted ‘mass-balance checks’ (essentially weighing the product at all stages of chain) to ensure that nothing unusual made it’s way in. It carries: If you know what’s going in, you must know what is falling out?

Opening up transparent information on food supply chains might prove to be the best opportunity in a long time for a blighted sector.

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Wasted parsnips. Photo Chris King. Sign today and change.org/stoptherot

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We are Stop the Rot

Stop the Rot is a new campaign launched by This is Rubbish. Running over a period of 3 months, Stop the Rot calls for the food industry to do more to tackle the problem of supply chain food waste.

Specifically we call on the Big Four supermarkets to do two key things;

Commit to reduce supermarket supply chain food waste by 30% by 2025

Commit to measuring their farms’ food waste by 2018

Starting in October and running until December, Stop the Rot uses an online Change.org  petition, media coverage, direct meetings and stunts to put pressure on the Big Four supermarkets, and the existing food waste policy framework; the Courtauld Commitment. We want both groups to publicly commit to do more to reduce levels of supply chain food waste.

7 million tonnes of food is wasted, before it reaches the supermarket shelves. This amount of food is enough to feed XX people. If you think this is an outrage, we urge you to act now. Support our demands for food systems change. Sign the petition today and share widely with your social networks.

change.org/stoptherot

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Stop the Rot is This Is Rubbish's new campaign to lift the lid on industry food waste.

7 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK supply chain before it even gets to the shopping basket, enough to lift every hungry person in the UK out of food poverty. Stop the Rot is campaigning for supermarkets to be transparent about the massive food waste in their supply chains, and commit to ambitious targets to reduce it.

We're already backed by a growing movement of endorsers, including Friends of the Earth, Rosie Boycott, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Kerry McCarthy (Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), Thomasina Miers, Dr Tim Fox and many more.

Join our growing movement to Stop the Rot.

stoptherot.org.uk twitter.com/foodwaste facebook.com/StopTheRot2025

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