A consortium of leading supermarkets and food & drink businesses have repeated calls for the Labour government to introduce Austrian-style mandatory food waste reporting.
Over the weekend, 33 companies – including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Abel & Cole, Olio and Bidfood – signed a joint letter to environment secretary Steve Reed, urging the new Government to “act now” to implement rules requiring large companies to be more transparent about the amount of food that is wasted throughout their operations.
Organised by food redistribution platform Too Good To Go and the BRC, the letter is a reissuing of a call made by the group to the then Conservative environment secretary Steve Barclay in March.
Industry bosses are hoping for a fresh start at Defra under Labour, after several u-turns under successive Conservative regimes over whether to implement plans for mandatory food waste reporting, which were first set out by Michael Gove in 2018.
In the letter, the companies said they welcomed the steps made by the government and Wrap through the Courtauld Commitment but stressed that only through mandatory reporting would businesses be able to operate based on the most reliable data possible.
In an open letter published at the same time, signatories urged the government to make “food waste reduction a priority”. Doing so would save the UK economy £21.8bn each year, enabling business not only save money, but unlock innovation and increase efficiency, they said.
Voluntary efforts to reduce food waste, while good-willed, and which have made some progress, do not go far enough, the letter said. Mandatory tracking and reporting of waste would hold businesses to account.
Highlighting the success of countries “like Austria” – which introduced mandatory food waste reporting in 2023 – the UK could become a “leader” in sustainable business practices, the letter said. Since the scheme was introduced late last year, total food waste has fallen by more than a million kilos across the 237 companies involved, Austrian government figures show.
Aldi, Cook Foods, Booths, Snow Fox, Ocado and Danone are among some of the other companies to sign the letter.
The Grocer understands that at the time of writing, Defra was yet to respond to the letter.
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