26 March 2011

Scotland and Wales declare war on food waste
The huge amount of food that is wasted in this country has emerged as a key stumbling block in reducing the total amount of rubbish we throw away as well as reducing carbon emissions and water loss.

Wales has an ambition to recycle 70% of its waste by 2025, becoming zero waste by 2050. Scotland has a similar target, adding that only 5% of its current waste should end up in landfill by 2025.

Its delivery body, Zero Waste Scotland, has just published its programme plan for 2011/15. It highlights as a barrier the limited reprocessing capacity in the country particularly around food waste, textiles and plastics.

It therefore prioritises setting up the infrastructure for processing these materials and creating markets based on the carbon impact and the potential for creating jobs and wealth.

The latter is based on the Scottish government's new carbon metric that evaluates the benefits of recycling.

This week the Scottish Futures Trust said that food waste will be among the major areas of the sector that it will look to support in the near future and with Zero Waste Scotland will look for strategic locations for anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities and help councils to secure AD and in-vessel composting and further support.

It aims to prevent capacity for 150,000 tonnes per year of additional food waste to be processed using AD by March 2015. This means developing markets for the compost, digestates and biogas that it will produce.

Meanwhile, in Wales this week, environment minister Jane Davidson - who opened a consultation on the Food Manufacture, Service and Retail Sector Plan for waste while visiting Wales' first commercial-scale anaerobic digestion plant - advocated the widespread implementation of AD technology.

The InSource Energy AD plant, at Premier Foods Ltd's RF Brookes factory near Newport, will use waste from food production to create energy to feed back into the production process when it becomes operational this summer.

Jane Davidson said: "Our Food Manufacture, Service and Retail plan sets out proposals for how these sectors can reduce the amount of waste they produce and manage any waste which they do create as sustainable a way as possible."

The plan proposes that businesses encourage their suppliers to use less packaging, that shops do more to help their customers reduce their waste, and that more waste help for small and medium-sized businesses is provided.

The Food Sector Plan, one of several 'sector plans' being developed by the WAG's Waste Strategy Branch (WSB), initially focuses on food and associated packaging throughout the supply chain:

- for waste prevention - food waste, paper and card

- for recycling and landfill diversion - diverting food waste to anaerobic digestion, recycling paper and card rather than landfill and recycling metals, and

- packaging waste (specifically glass, plastic, wood, metal, paper and card), with regards to reduction, reuse and recycling.

RF Brookes (part of Premier Foods PLC) was cited as a prime example of success. In three years it has reversed waste costs at its two Welsh sites - going from paying 7,500 a month to receiving a 1,200 rebate, and almost doubled the amount of waste it recycles.

A series of workshops is being run during the spring for food businesses to get involved.

The water and carbon costs of wasted food

The attack on food waste was given further urgency this week by a report from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) and WWF which finds that water used to produce food that householders in the UK then throw away represents 6% of the UK's water requirements, (6.2 billion cubic metres per year), a quarter of which originates in the UK.

Astonishingly, this is nearly twice the annual household water usage in the UK.

The same wasted food also represents 3% of the UK's domestic greenhouse gas emissions (14 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent) with further emissions arising abroad (six million tonnes of CO2 equivalent), according to the Water and Carbon Footprint of Household Food Waste in the UK report.

In total, these greenhouse gas emissions are the same as those created by seven million cars each year.

This is the first time these incidental wastes have been calculated.

"These figures are quite staggering," commented Liz Goodwin, chief executive at WRAP. "The water footprint for wasted food - 280 litres per person, per day - is nearly twice the average daily household water use of the UK, 150 litres per person per day.

"The greenhouse gas emissions associated with food waste are greater than those already saved by the total amount of household recycling that takes place in the UK.

"We already know that by reducing food waste, householders can save money. Now it's absolutely clear that they can make a big contribution to addressing environmental concerns too."

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