Defunding food waste efforts is disastrous for society and climate

Considering all the efforts made to tackle food waste over the past year, the last thing we want to do is to go backwards. Yet that’s exactly what could happen unless the government maintains funding, FareShare warned today.

It’s concerned over the future of the annual £5m Food Waste Fund – a pot of money that has helped the industry cover the costs of safely storing and transporting surplus food to charities since 2018. So far, the government has rejected calls to renew it for another year. If that happens, an extra 53 million meals worth of food will go to waste every year, FareShare estimates.

Granted, the government reluctance is likely down to economic constraints, rather than a failure to grasp the food waste issue. Still, ditching the fund now would seem a particular misfire. That’s not just because food poverty is on the rise and is likely to increase even further as furlough ends. Importantly, food waste is an environmental issue, too.

It’s a point that FareShare CEO Lindsay Boswell hammered home as he launched the #FoodOnPlates campaign, urging the government to reconsider. As he said, once you add in the environmental costs to the social ones, defunding efforts to tackle food waste is “complete madness”.

Wrap has also been pushing the sustainability angle this year. In March, it staged a food waste action week fronted by GBBO winner Nadiya Hussain to highlight the message ‘wasting food feeds climate change’. It pointed out the ‘edible’ element of household food waste was responsible for 14 million tonnes of CO2e alone – the equivalent of flying from London to Perth more than 4.5 million times. Yet that message wasn’t getting through to the public: only 32% of those surveyed by Wrap saw a link between climate change and food waste.

Slowly that understanding is coming through. Today, food sharing app Olio announced it had raised $43m in Series B funding – a success that is partially down to growing concerns around carbon emissions. Co-founder Tessa Clarke said a growing number of businesses saw food waste reduction as an important part of hitting net zero targets.

It’s something for the government to ponder as it reiterates its commitment to making the UK a net zero economy. If it truly wants to meet that goal – and help tackle poverty and hunger in the process – funding the fight against food waste is surely a no-brainer.