The House of Lords EU Committee last week called for urgent action on food waste in Europe, highlighting that at least 90 million tonnes of food is wasted across the EU each year.

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In a report published on Sunday 6^th April, the committee outlined the environmental (as well as financial) impacts of food waste, and urged wide reforms to minimise loss. Food waste in the UK is estimated at around 15 million tonnes every year, or £5 billion pounds' worth of food (this level of waste is proportionally high – 17 percent of the EU's total food waste, compared to the UK population, which makes up only 12 percent of EU inhabitants).

Detailed investigations into waste around the world have revealed that up to 50 percent of food produced worldwide does not reach end users; in the global south, food is predominantly lost through problems with infrastructure and storage, whereas in the North losses occur later in the supply chain, and are mostly the easily avoidable results of consumerist mores.  

The carbon footprint of this waste is enormous, and the later in the supply chain food is wasted, the bigger the environmental impact it has. This is because food wasted later will have a higher carbon footprint associated with storage, packaging and transportation.

Recommendations

In light of its findings, the Lords committee called on the EU Commission to publish a more unified strategy for targeting food waste across the continent, ending the current "fragmented and untargeted" efforts to tackle waste.

They also demanded that retailers, "and in particular the big supermarkets who dominate food sales in the UK", to act more responsibly in limiting food waste by both farmers and consumers. The committee suggested that supermarkets should end food offers that could lead to waste, including 'buy one get one free' offers on perishable products. The Lords touched on a key area of concern for farmers who have complained about exploitative practices in the past; they said supermarkets should avoid cancelling orders of food that has already been grown by producers a practice, which then leads to unsold but perfectly edible food being ploughed back into the fields or left unharvested.

Millions of tonnes of food are thought to be wasted annually in this way.

In line with calls made by certain green groups (most recently the Pig Idea campaign), but which have often received a lukewarm response from industry, The Committee also said Government action (and E regulations) should support retailers to redistribute unsold food, where safe, for animal feed, and only send unusable material on for anaerobic digestion. They said measures such as tax breaks could be used to incentivise retailers to rethink waste would and create a 'food use hierarchy' that stresses the use by humans of food initially intended for human consumption. 

They also said that, in implementing the Common Agricultural Policy, the Government should consider reducing on-farm food waste as a key objective given the economic benefits this could produce.

However, the Lords stopped short of demanding a reversal of cuts to the government's WRAP waste project, only going so far as to recommend that ministers "work closely with WRAP to ensure that cuts to WRAP's budget do not undermine efforts to reduce food waste"

Baroness Scott of Needham Market, Chair of the Lords Committee that led an inquiry into waste said, "Food waste in the EU and the UK is clearly a huge issue. Not only is it morally repugnant, but it has serious economic and environmental implications. The fact that 90 million tonnes of food is wasted across the EU each year shows the extent of the problem and explains why we are calling for urgent action. Globally, consumers in industrialised nations waste up to 222 million tonnes of food a year, which is equivalent to nearly the entire level of net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.

"We cannot allow the complexity of the issues around defining and monitoring food waste to delay action any further. We are calling on the new European Commission, which will be appointed in November this year, to publish a five year strategy for reducing food waste across the EU, and to do so within six months of taking

office."

Baroness Scott added, "We were shocked at the extent of food waste in the EU. Especially given the current economic challenges the EU faces, it is an absolutely shocking waste of resources. Some efforts are already being made, which is very positive, but much more can be done."