The Mayor of London Boris Johnson has launched ‘FoodSave’, a new scheme to help food businesses maximise their profits by reducing food waste and diverting surplus food to useful purposes and away from landfill.
A huge issue in the UK
Food waste is a huge issue in the UK. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimate that around 15 million tonnes of food and drink are thrown away every year, of which four million is from food service, restaurants and manufacturing. Food waste makes up 41per cent of all waste generated by the UK hospitality sector.
To help address this, the Mayor is working in partnership with the European Regional Development Fund and London Waste and Recycling Board to support over 240 small and medium-sized businesses in cutting food waste over the next 18 months.
The ‘FoodSave’ project will help businesses in a variety of ways including:
- Identifying where most food is wasted
- Providing advice on how to reduce food waste
- Helping businesses send food to people in need through organisations that redistribute food
- Helping businesses to direct food waste to feed animals such as pigs (where legally permitted)
- Where food waste can’t be avoided, supporting composting and renewable energy generation
Matthew Pencharz, the Mayor’s Senior Adviser on Environment said: “’FoodSave is a brilliant initiative that can help businesses reduce their food waste disposal costs and become more efficient. I encourage as many businesses as possible to get involved and both save money and help the environment.”
The Mayor is working with the Sustainable Restaurant Association and Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming to deliver the project directly with food businesses.
Preventing 1,000 tonnes of waste to landfill
FoodSave will directly support 240 businesses, and by March 2015 aims to achieve overall savings of £360,000 and prevent more than 1,000 tonnes of food waste being sent to landfill. The Sustainable Restaurant Association will work with restaurants, hotels, pubs, quick service restaurants and canteens. Sustain will work with businesses involved in food retail, food manufacturing and preparation, food growing, farming, catering, street food, market stalls and wholesale markets.
FoodSave has already started working with a small number of businesses and the project will be rolled out to many more early in the new-year.
If you are a food business and would like to find out more about the project click here