Tag: food waste

Spook-tastic ways to use pumpkins this Halloween

26th Oct 22 by Megan Romania

Across two ‘Halloween’ seasons alone, Feedback rescued around 45 tonnes of would-be-wasted pumpkins.

Join us for some Pumpkin gleaning in Sussex on November 2!

Crisp apples. Cosy sweaters. Colourful leaves. Why yes, Autumn is by far my favourite season. And with this changing season comes my favourite holiday: Halloween.

Halloween, and even the whole of October, is characterised by spook and scare. One thing is for certain, the most frightening part of Halloween isn’t the ghosts, the ghouls, the black cats or broomsticks. Instead, what sends a chill down my spine are the pumpkins. Or rather, the unnecessary food waste incurred by their existence.

Carvings pumpkins is great fun, there’s no doubt. However, in an age where food production and consumption are the greatest impacts humans have on the planet, it’s becoming ever more prudent to reconsider the role that our holiday celebrations play as well. Halloween, and our meticulously carved pumpkins, can be no exception. Boo*.

In 2021, Feedback rescued 5.3 tonnes of pumpkins from farms. This represents a massive waste of precious resources used to grow pumpkins ultimately thrown away. We can personally attest that they are tasty and would be better used for a variety of autumnal recipes!

The Alchemic Kitchen, Feedback’s social enterprise based in the North West of England, have been leading Feedback’s creative efforts to use pumpkins that would otherwise be left to rot in the fields or on front porches. Savoury pumpkin scones, a Thai yellow curry, and a delicious dahl are just a few of the possibilities.

Have a pumpkin recipe you’d love to share? Tweet us at @feedbackorg or tag us on Facebook!

*Pun intended?

Part of campaigns
Gleaning Network

Join us in the fields - it’s time to get your hands dirty!

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Food citizens

Let’s take ownership of our food - and how it reaches our plates

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Regional Food Economy – Alchemic Kitchen

Creating a better food economy for a sustainable future in the North West

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Waste in supply chains

Tracing the supply chains that bring our food from farms around the world to supermarket shelves

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Sussex Surplus

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Have yourself a merry, waste-free holiday!

20th Dec 21 by Megan Romania

Reflect on your food waste and wider consumerism. One simple way to reduce food waste is to scale back how much you buy to begin with.

‘T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even…’

Oh, a mouse.

Gnawing away your leftover holiday roast.

If you’re one of those people who has tossed out uneaten, but still edible, Christmas puddings, you’re not alone. Indeed, alongside the holiday festivities, with turkey, mince pies, and all sorts of puddings galore, comes the significant food waste in households. In fact, Unilever research estimates that every Christmas, British individuals throw away an estimated 2 million turkeys, 74 million mince pies and 5 million Christmas puddings. Yikes.

Even less joyous, this post-holiday waste is only part of the picture. WRAP estimates that British households throw away around 7 tonnes of food (worth around £720 per family) annually. Such wasteful practices are having both significant economic and environmental impacts – in fact, reducing food waste is one of the most effective ways we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

‘It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters but who’s around it.’ – Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas

We ask that you reflect on your food waste practices and wider consumerism. One simple way to reduce holiday food waste is to scale back how much you purchase to begin with; if you know certain foods won’t be eaten, then reconsider their purchase in the first place. Reflecting on your broader consumerism practices might include opting to gift experiences rather than physical items, or re-gifting unused items, purchasing gifts from second-hand stores or charity shops, or gifting a currently owned sentimental item, such as your favourite book or jumper. After all, the holidays aren’t about things and stuff, they’re about spending quality time with the people you love, surrounded by delicious food and cheer.

Even if you tried your best to gauge how much food you’d need for the holidays, it’s possible you’ll still end up with too many leftovers. But, if you do have heaps of leftovers and don’t know where to start, have no fear! Feedback’s Alchemic Kitchen has compiled a list of easy-to-make, delicious post-holiday recipes to help you re-purpose those extra parsnips – thus reducing food waste and saving you money at the same time.

What holiday recipes do you love to make with leftovers? Tweet or Facebook us!

Recipes

Roast Potatoes

If you haven’t gobbled up all of your roast potatoes, combining them with pickled onions and greens make a delicious Boxing Day breakfast.

Heat 3 tbsp of vegetable oil in a shallow frying pan, and add in the pickled onion, sliced in half. Toss over medium heat until the onions start to caramelise – allow about 10 minutes. Add a pinch of cayenne and some thyme. Then, add in your leftover roast potatoes (you want about 500g in total); you can also throw in any leftover parsnips and carrots. Stir well to keep from sticking. Finely slice your leftover greens (brussels sprouts are perfect) and add to the pan. Season with salt and pepper and then serve. The crispy bits are the best!

Stuffing hash with pigs in blankets

If (by some miracle) all the pigs in blankets haven’t been used up, make this Boxing Day hangover cure.

Heat a large shallow pan, add a little oil, then crumble in the leftover stuffing. Snip your pigs in blankets into 3 and add to the pan. Stir well. If you have a few roast potatoes or other veggies leftover, chuck them in as well. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and stir well. A pinch of chilli works well at this point. Spread the mixture evenly over the base of your pan, use a spoon to make 4 hollows and then break an egg into each hollow. Cover the pan with a lid and keep on a low heat while the eggs set; this takes about 4 minutes. Serve.

Sandwiches – what Christmas leftovers are all about

The below are amazing combinations for toasted sandwiches:

  • Crumbled Stilton mixed with a dollop of mayo, sliced spring onion, and chopped dried apricots.
  • Brie and cranberry with a scoop of leftover red cabbage.
  • Gently cook a sliced onion in butter and add a tsp of curry powder, shred in leftover turkey or chicken, add a dollop of mango chutney and some crème fraîche. Also works very well with noodles or flat ribbon pasta.

Roast Parsnip Soup

If you have a few parsnips left over from your Christmas dinner, don’t bin them, make this delicious soup instead!

Halve and chop one onion and cook gently in 1 tbsp of butter (or vegetable oil) until soft and golden (it takes longer than you think!). Keep the heat low and stir occasionally; don’t let it brown or the soup will be bitter. Chop up your leftover roast parsnips, about 400g or so, and add to the pan with a sprig or two or thyme if you have it on hand. Stir well. Add 1.5 pints of stock (turkey is ideal, but you can use vegetable if you prefer) and bring it to a slow simmer for 10 minutes. Take off the heat, remove the thyme sprigs, and use a blender to purée the soup. If it’s too thick for your liking, add a bit more stock. Taste and add seasoning – lots of pepper is good. At this point you can start playing – if you have left over stilton, crumble some in, if you have cream, add a dollop. If nuts are more your thing, toast a handful of chopped hazelnuts or walnuts and scatter over the top. We have been known to fry up stuffing until crisp and then scatter that across the top. If Santa has been kind and brought you truffle oil, a drizzle or two works absolute magic.

Puddings

Leftover stollen or panettone makes an amazing baked pudding, especially with extra marzipan.

Chop up about 250g of either stolen or panettone into chunks. Grease a shallow baking dish with butter. Pile the sweet breads into the dish. If you have leftover marzipan to use up, glacé fruits or chocolate chop up and toss with the breads. In another bowl, whisk together 2 eggs, 225 ml of milk and 140 ml of cream, add a tbsp of caster sugar and a tsp of vanilla essence. Pour over the breads. Set the baking dish into a roasting tray and pour over hot water to halfway up the sides of the baking dish (not in with the bread). Carefully place in the oven at 140C fan or Gas Mark 3 and bake for about 35 minutes until lightly browned. Dust with icing sugar and serve with a dollop of ice cream.

Leftover mincemeat from pies is delicious added to halved and cored baking apples.

Place apples into a microwaveable dish. Spoon mincemeat (you can also use marzipan) into the middle of the apples, add a dot of butter, and cover with cling film. Pierce to let steam out and microwave for 4.5 minutes on high. Serve with custard.

Too much cream? Make citrus possets.

Place 600ml of double cream and 120g caster sugar in a pan. Heat gently, stirring to ensure all the sugar has dissolved and the cream just started to bubble. Allow about 5 minutes. Add the zest and juice of 1 large orange and 2 lemons (you can also use tangerines) and stir well. Set aside to cool down. Once cool, spoon into glasses and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours or ideally overnight. Serve with those leftover shortbreads.

 

 

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Feedback’s response to the ADBA’s article ‘Why you MUST invest in anaerobic digestion and biogas to build back greener’

6th Nov 20 by Martin Bowman, Senior Policy and Campaign Manager

Feedback provides some clarity and accuracy on our research findings on AD.

Feedback welcome the ADBA’s response to our Executive Director’s recent article in Responsible Investor – however, since the ADBA misrepresent our view and the issues, we hope that this response provides some clarity. For more info, read our report on AD.

A summary of Feedback’s advice to investors

Don’t invest in:

  • AD plants which run on bioenergy crops like maize or grass – even if these are co-digested
  • AD plants built on newly built or newly expanded intensive livestock farms
  • AD plants which lower the costs of animal waste disposal for intensive livestock farms
  • AD plants which process food waste edible to humans or animals
  • AD plants which charge little or nothing for waste disposal or actively pay for wastes, and thus disincentivise waste prevention

Do invest in:

  • AD plants which digest sewage feedstocks
  • AD plants which process only manures and slurries on smaller-scale more sustainable livestock farms
  • AD plants which take on unavoidable food waste which is not edible to humans or animals
  • AD plants which charge higher gate fees to take on food wastes or animal slurries

 

First, the points on which we agree: AD does have some role in a sustainable future, as a last-resort waste management option – as we argue in our report, there is a ‘sustainable niche’ for AD. AD is certainly better than landfill and incineration of food waste, and is preferable to open storage of manure and slurries – practices which should be heavily taxed and banned as soon as possible. To be clear, this will require some growth in the AD industry, and investment to this end – so it is sometimes sustainable to invest in AD, within limits and in some specific situations. We also agree that sewage treatment by AD is part of this sustainable niche. ADBA’s false claim that Feedback assume AD can only be used to treat food waste is misplaced – our report and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study on which it is based, examine bioenergy crops, manure and slurries too.

However, crucially we model two scenarios: the “industry driven AD” scenario in line with ADBA’s ambitions for AD industry growth, and the “climate optimised AD” scenario where environmentally preferable alternative uses for AD feedstocks are maximized (like food waste prevention) with remaining feedstocks used for AD. In the climate-optimised scenario, we model no bioenergy crops and about a third less food waste going to AD, and additionally we model a context where meat production (and thus availability of manure and slurries) is roughly halved – but all available slurries go to AD in both scenarios. The LCA found that the climate optimised scenario resulted in over double the emissions savings, as well as generating more energy (generated by solar PV on land previously used for bioenergy crops) and significantly higher food production on spared cropland.

ADBA’s presentation of AD as a “win-win-win-win” solution is a simplistic fantasy, although not a surprising stance to take for a body set up to promote the AD industry. Our ground-breaking LCA study, completed in collaboration with academic experts at Bangor University, shows a far more complex and nuanced picture, with some serious limitations to AD. Below, we highlight four key problems:

The first problem is that, as the ADBA acknowledge, AD is far less effective than waste prevention. In fact, preventing food waste results in 9 times more emissions savings than sending it to AD, and if trees are planted on the spared grassland, about 40 times more. The ADBA also often ignore animal feed – our LCA found that sending food waste to animal feed saves 3 times more emissions than sending it to AD. This makes food waste prevention, and using food waste as animal feed, far more effective green investments – and means that only unavoidable food waste inedible to both humans and animals should be sent to AD. Within the current legal framework, there is plenty of scope to increase the processing of food waste like bread for animal feeds – and EU-funded research found that it is possible to feed food waste containing meat to pigs and chickens safely, if EU law is reformed to allow this in a safely regulated fashion. When it comes to manures and slurries, these wastes can be prevented too – through shifts from meat to plant-based diets. For instance, switching from pig meat to a plant-based protein alternative such as tofu results in a 74% reduction in emissions and 80% in land use – land which can then be used for tree planting to offset emissions even further. The emissions savings from sending slurries to AD are far smaller in comparison – so investing in plant-based alternatives to meat would be a far greener investment, from pulses and beans to plant-based burgers and milks. Investors looking to green their portfolios should aim to support dietary shifts as a priority, with AD only used to mitigate the emissions of a smaller, more sustainable livestock sector.

The second problem is that high subsidies to AD create perverse incentives, sometimes actively impeding the better waste prevention alternatives mentioned above. It is completely disingenuous of the ADBA to claim that they are not advocating for high subsidies locked in for decades – their own report clearly advises that AD subsidies are returned to the very high levels of 2011-15, that large-scale AD is subsidised at the same high levels as small-scale plants, and that these be guaranteed for decades into the future. In Northern Ireland, AD subsidies at a similar high level to those advocated by the ADBA were explicitly designed as a means to support an explosion in the size of the country’s intensive livestock industry. Through reducing the industry’s waste disposal costs (even paying for their waste), enabling sites to gain planning permission and bypass environmental regulations, highly subsidised AD plants actually helped expand the polluting industry it was meant to be reducing the environmental effects of. In the case of food waste too, testimonies to a House of Lords enquiry complained that high AD subsidies created perverse incentives to send edible food to AD rather than ensure it is eaten, and Feedback has found many other instances of such complaints. In one case, Feedback’s investigations found an AD plant in a port that in a single day was processing an estimated 60,000 cucumbers, 10,000 figs, 4,000 cabbages and many other foods – which all appeared edible. In this context of distorting high subsidies, investments in some AD plants may thus actively prevent far more sustainable alternatives. The better way to make AD plants financially sustainable without creating these perverse incentives is to tax or ban worse alternatives to AD, such as incineration, landfill, and open manure storage, thus pushing up the supply of wastes to AD and gate fees they can charge for collection.

The third problem is that AD’s emissions mitigation potential significantly declines over time. This is a big problem, since AD plants often take decades of highly subsidised operation to break even on their high up-front costs. The reason for the decline is that as society decarbonises, the emissions that AD currently mitigates are often avoided by other means – for instance, as the electricity grid shifts to renewables, heat and transport are electrified, landfill and open manure storage are banned, AD begins to compare less and less favourably with alternatives. Our study found that some AD feedstocks like grass even begin to have a negative rather than positive environmental impact in a net zero context. This means that the green credentials of investments in AD will decline significantly over time. In comparison, food waste prevention, tree planting, dietary change and solar PV consistently far outperform AD in future decarbonisation contexts (see our report for more detail on this).

The final problem with AD is that, although the AD industry claim that they only want “unavoidable” wastes to go to AD, they have a strong incentive to downplay how much waste is “avoidable” to maximize their growth. The ADBA nowhere in its report mentions dietary shifts away from meat as an option and only currently support the UK’s unambitious voluntary targets on food waste, which pledge only a 24% reduction in post-farmgate food waste between 2015 and 2030. A 50% reduction in UK meat consumption, a genuine 50% reduction in UK food waste from farm to fork through ambitious regulation, and tree planting on the millions of hectares of land that would be spared by these measures, could together mean that UK agriculture could be net carbon negative by 2040 without recourse to BECCS. The AD industry is eager portray agriculture as “difficult to decarbonise” because it actively sidelines these more ambitious alternatives.

 

*Using 2007 as a baseline year, excluding inedible food waste, using per capita figures which also use a 2007 baseline year.

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How the Alchemic Kitchen is responding to Covid-19

2nd Apr 20 by Keenan Humble, Development Chef, Alchemic Kitchen

As a team we put our heads together and decided on how we could best utilise our resources to help our community during this difficult time.

In these uncertain times, the team at Alchemic Kitchen put our heads together and decided on how we could best utilise our resources to help our community; which resulted in putting the marmalade making to one side to focus on tackling potential food shortages in the region. We have been overwhelmed at the support we have received from chefs and restaurants over the last couple of weeks, their response has been fantastic and has aided the work we are doing to ensure people are being fed. We have received donations of food from places that have been forced to close as a result of government advice and have been turning it into hearty soups. We are working with partner organisations to then get the food to where it needs to be.

We have figured that we have the capacity to feed up to 250 people per week, providing there is an appetite for it, and we can get enough community partners involved to run the operation safely and within the guidelines set out by government.

That is a lot of soup to make over the coming weeks and months and so far we have either made or had donated:

Celeriac, Apple & Wild Garlic
Leek, Carrot & Fava Bean
Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato
Spiced Tomato
Thai Corn & Sweet Potato
Potato, Mushroom & Basil

However, this is just the beginning. We have received a fresh delivery of lentils, fava beans and split peas from Hodmedod’s and I am still working through a mountain of produce that has been donated to the cause.

My life isn’t just all soup now, though. I am also writing recipes that might be useful for people at home who are leaning on their store cupboard a little more than usual and we are also running a kitchen diagnostic on social media so if you need a little inspiration get in touch with us on Thursday’s by tweeting @AlchemicKitchen with the hashtag  #AlchemicKitchen with your cooking quandary and we will reply between 5pm-7pm.

Stay well,

Keenan Humble and everyone from the Alchemic Kitchen.

Help us get good food to those who need it

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A load of tripe?

12th Mar 20 by Christina O'Sullivan

To eat meat or not to eat meat, is that the right question?

Big Livestock, the rearing of livestock on an industrial scale, has a massive negative impact on our planet, 36% of world crops are used to feed livestock, not people. Meanwhile, animal-based foods (meat and dairy) only deliver 12% of the world’s food calories. For environmental reasons many of us have turned to meat-free diets to reduce our carbon footprint. For those of us who want to eat meat we need to adopt a ‘Less and Better’ approach and I have an offal-y good place to start.

Recent research focusing on Germany’s meat supply chain showed the single most effective way to reduce emissions from producing meat is unsurprisingly to eat less of it, showing that halving meat consumption could reduce Germany’s meat emissions by 32%. The study also showed that eating more offal could significantly reduce emissions. If 50% less offal was wasted, then emissions could fall by 14%. If we are going to eat meat, we should eat the whole animal. Eating more offal and reducing overall meat consumption means less intensive meat production i.e. less animals living in factory farms.

This approach should be adopted across all the food we eat; nose to tail, fin to gill and root to stem. Waste is not just what goes in the bin but in the food we often opt to overlook. Feedback’s productivity principle stipulates minimal environmental damage for maximum nutrition consumed and the same principle should be applied to how we eat at home. It takes so much precious natural resources to produce the food on our plates it is important to make the most of it. Plus, if like me you enjoy getting creative in the kitchen it is a fun challenge. For some inspiration check out our Alchemic Kitchen who work magic with surplus food.

“Offal opens up the sense of the whole beast to the Western world, gives greater value to those cuts and brings back greater skills into our kitchens,” Trevor Gulliver, co-founder the first nose-to-tail restaurant, St. John, in London

Maybe the answer isn’t solely focusing on restricting our diets but enjoying a greater more sustainable variety. Less chicken breasts and more tripe – try it you might love it!

 

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Roast dinner leftover soup

29th Jan 20 by Keenan Humble

A great soup to make after a Sunday roast using leftovers and things from your cupboard.

This recipe is great to cook after the weekend, if you have made a Sunday roast, as you may well have the leftovers and peelings from vegetables. The recipe is really versatile and any left-over veg or veg peelings you have can form the base of the soup. The same principle can be applied with the main body of the soup; boiled potatoes, cooked rice, cooked pasta and cooked noodles can all be used. The herbs and spices you use is also completely versatile, whether you have dried or fresh – use whatever is in the cupboard!

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion (peeled & chopped)

4 garlic cloves (peeled & crushed)

3 leek tops (sliced)

2 tbsp oregano (fresh or dried)

2 tbsp smoked paprika

2 tsp salt

2 tsp black pepper

1.5 litre veg stock

Carrot peelings (from 4/6 carrots)

Potato peelings (from 4/6 medium potatoes)

Broccoli stalks (chopped)

Cauliflower leaves (chopped)

Mashed potato/ boiled potato/ cooked rice/ cooked pasta

1) Put your oil into a large saucepan and add your chopped onion, crushed garlic and sliced leek tops. Sweat for 3-4 minutes over a low/ medium heat until the contents of the pan have softened. At this point add your smoked paprika, oregano, salt and pepper.

2) Pour over 2/3 of the vegetable stock and add the peel from the potatoes and carrots, cauliflower leaves and broccoli stalks. Allow the veg trimmings to cook until tender, this should only take around 10 minutes in simmering stock.

3) Once your veg is cooked and tender, add your mashed potato/ boiled potato/ cooked rice etc. If you are using cooked rice, ensure it has been stored in the fridge and then cooked through fully in the stock. Whatever carbohydrate base you have chosen to use, cook it through in the stock, stirring regularly.

4) Once all of the ingredients have been added and heated through, use a stick blended, or regular blender to blitz the soup until smooth. It is here where the last of the stock may come in handy, if the soup is a little thick, add more stock until it is the right consistency for you.

5) Once blended, put the soup back on the heat and warm through. Check the seasoning and serve.

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Feedback’s responds to new food waste figures

24th Jan 20 by Martin Bowman, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager

The government must introduce binding targets to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030.

WRAP has published a report on food waste reduction over the past three years. The figures out today have shown that while household food waste has dropped by 0.405 million tonnes, a whopping 4.5 million tonnes is still wasted per year, and business food waste has dropped by a mere 0.07 million tonnes over the last 3 years. Read our response to the research below;

“These figures confirm that voluntary business action on food waste cannot solve the problem. Post-farmgate food businesses have collectively cut their waste by a negligible 1% per year over the last 3 years. Despite big promises to halve food waste by 2030, the food industry is planning on achieving less than half that reduction, and the huge amounts of fresh produce left to rot on farms are still excluded from national targets. With food waste a key contributor to climate change, time running out to get our emissions under control and the UN climate summit in Glasgow fast approaching, it is now absolutely clear that the government must introduce binding targets to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030, and make it compulsory for large food businesses to report their food waste data publicly.” 

Sign our petition – tell governments to make businesses come clean on food waste now.

 

2020 is here – described by some as the beginning of ‘the decisive decade’ for the climate emergency.

2020 is also the year Feedback enters our second decade campaigning to end waste and create a healthy and sustainable food system, and we are more keenly aware of our responsibility than ever. We rely on donations from our supporters to carry out this vital work.

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Spreading Gleaning across the globe

30th Oct 19 by Dan Woolley, Head of Pilot Programmes

I had never been to a commercial fruit farm before attending a glean with Feedback.

In Autumn 2017, Kako Black, an Australian student on a one-year placement at Warwick university, joined Feedback for a six-month volunteering placement. Kako had contacted us before leaving Australia, as she was especially keen to learn more about our various projects and campaigns tackling food waste.

During her time at Feedback, Kako learned about and assisted with many areas of our work; she was particularly interested in our Gleaning Network programme, especially after attending several Gleaning days on farms and orchards.

“Even though I was someone who identified as being passionate about food waste, and concerned about food sustainability, I had never been to a commercial fruit farm before attending a glean with Feedback. I realised that I had been engaging with the issue of food waste from a single perspective (as a consumer) and that there were so many other ways to get involved – including, and importantly, at farm level. Sometimes the scale of the issue feels overwhelming. But unlike many other global issues, food sustainability is something we can all take direct action on. We all eat. We all have the capacity to make significant changes and tangible impact on reducing waste. What Feedback has taught me is that these actions are not the only way to get involved. It is also vital that we expand our perspectives and move away from solely consumer impacts to learn about and change our food system. We are not just food consumers, but food citizens.”

When Kako returned to Australia in the spring of 2018, we very much hoped that she would keep in touch. She was keen to find ways to continue the fight against food waste; we hoped there would be some great local projects she could get involved with.

 

But Kako went one step further: rather than wait for something to happen, Kako seized the initiative – and set up her own gleaning project, GIVback, to rescue crops in the state of Victoria.

We’re immensely proud of Kako, and inspired to know that Feedback’s work is having a positive impact on the other side of the world.

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Campaign win – Arla to remove ‘Use By’ dates on milk to reduce waste

11th Sep 19 by Christina O'Sullivan

We should be crying over spilled milk and taking tangible steps to reduce food waste in the face of climate catastrophe.

In February, we launched our ‘Milking It’ campaign calling on supermarkets to address their date labelling policies and reduce milk waste. Arla, a massive dairy cooperative who supply supermarket brands such as Cravendale, have committed to scrapping ‘Use By’ date labels on milk and encouraging individuals to use the ‘sniff test’. We are calling on the top four UK supermarkets to do the same.

Write to your supermarket now.

Why we should be crying over spilled milk

The Amazon is on fire and a large driver of this is our current dysfunctional food system. Cows are often fed large amounts of soya which leads to deforestation – read more on soya in our recent blog. Globally, the meat and dairy industries exact a huge toll on our global environment and are major drivers of climate change, estimated to account for 15% of total global emissions – more than the entire global transport sector. At an individual level, although milk is not the most wasted food, milk waste represents the highest contribution to Greenhouse Gas Emissions compared to other food as it is so widely consumed and resource-intensive to produce. Wasting less milk has many positive trickle down effects.

Supermarkets hold a massive amount of power in the food supply chain, and by changing their date labelling policies they have an opportunity to make a real difference

Write to your supermarket now.

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Tell your supermarket to follow Arla's lead and scrap date labels

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Environmental and Economic potential of surplus food as pig feed

31st Jul 19 by Christina O'Sullivan

Feedback's Martin Bowman outlines how Europe is getting closer to finding a safe way to safely process surplus food into feed.

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The on-farm food waste mountain

25th Jul 19 by Martin Bowman, Policy and Campaigns Manager

Feedback reacts to WRAP’s announcement today that around 3.6 million tonnes of food is wasted annually on UK farms.

Today, WRAP have released a ground-breaking report, for the first time revealing estimates of the food wasted on UK farms. Including the 2 million tonnes of surplus (usually human-edible food used as animal feed), there is a total of 3.6 million tonnes, more than the food waste and surplus at manufacturing and retail level combined.

Farmers are frustrated

This confirms what Feedback have long been hearing from UK farmers. But it would be a mistake to blame farmers for this waste. Feedback’s Gleaning Network saves leftover food from UK farms for charity, and we regularly speak to farmers who are devastated to have to waste perfectly edible food that they’ve toiled long hours to grow. Why? Feedback’s report Farmers Talk Food Waste found that UK fruit and vegetable farmers were forced to waste 10-16% of their crop due to supermarket and middlemen practices – including rejections of food for being the wrong size and shape, encouraging systemic overproduction by punishing undersupply, low farm-gate prices which sometimes below the cost of harvest, and Unfair Trading Practices like last minute order cancellations. We need to support farmers by reforming these supermarket practices, to help them reduce costs and waste.

The problems of sugar, milk and meat

Some of the more surprising findings of WRAP’s report are the scale of food waste occurring in sectors outside fruit and vegetables. For instance, they find that the highest volumes of food waste by weight occur for sugar beet – 347,000 tonnes or 3.9% of production. Sugar is not only bad for the nation’s health and teeth, but it has hugely negative impacts on soil erosion and uses up more land than the rest of UK vegetable production combined – we’ll be releasing more on this soon through our sugar campaign. The report also finds that the 4th most wasted product is milk and the 6th is poultry. Much of this is as a result of animal diseases and contamination, so this is not necessarily edible to humans. However, given the huge environmental footprint of meat and need to slash UK meat production and consumption to stay within safe limits of climate change, it’s startling to see such large volumes wasted. See our campaign The Cow in the Room for more info.

Producing food which is never eaten is a vast waste of natural resources including land, water and soil at a time of environmental emergency – this presents a huge opportunity to liberate land and resources which are desperately needed for reforestation and growing sustainable food. A report commissioned by the Committee for Climate Change recently found that reducing food waste could save considerable carbon emissions and liberate 482,000 hectares of arable land and 459,000 hectares of grasslands – and their calculations did not include food wasted on farms, which could contribute even more. We now know that planting trees is one of the most important ways we have to prevent a climate crisis – so this liberated land presents great potential.

Up to 5,000,000 tonnes

But WRAP’s figure is still an estimate – mainly based on non-UK data and self-reporting by farmers which is notorious for underreporting food waste. Therefore, this may well be an under-estimate of the levels of waste – the data isn’t good enough to tell yet. WRAP’s report estimates that the reality is probably somewhere in between 1.9 and 5 million tonnes per year – if it was 5 million tonnes, it would be nearly as much edible food as is thrown away by consumers.

Throughout the EU, farm-level food waste is almost completely ignored, assumed to be minimal and unimportant due to a pervasive narrative that this only a problem in the Global South due to lack of storage and infrastructure. Feedback have been campaigning hard to persuade the EU to measure food waste on farms, but the Commission recently made the terrible decision to exclude almost all on-farm food waste from the compulsory food waste measurement EU countries will have to begin in 2020. But due to campaigning, a ray of light is that the Commission has now pledged to release funds for some pilot studies to measure agricultural food waste in more detail.

The reason that UK data is still so shaky is that the government has consistently cut funding for food waste measurement and prevention. WRAP originally estimated that they would have robust data ready by 2018, but with limited funding this deadline has drifted. Now we know the scale of the problem, we need the government to fund detailed measurement of on-farm food waste to go beyond estimates and generate accurate baselines from which to set targeted reduction of on-farm food waste – like for other sectors.

Going backwards

We also call on the government to renew the Groceries Code Adjudicator and extend their remit to protect indirect suppliers like farmers from Unfair Trading Practices like last-minute order cancellations which cause waste. This is particularly important in the face of the current Adjudicator Christine Tacon’s surprising advice that the UK move back towards a system where Unfair Trading Practices are self-regulated by the industry. The Groceries Code Supply of Practice was self-regulated by industry for years before the Adjudicator was introduced, and without an independent regulator with power to punish businesses for non-compliance, supermarkets predictably failed to self-enforce the Code. It is difficult to see why voluntary self-regulation would be any more effective now. The farming industry and NGOs campaigned hard for years to achieve the introduction of a regulator with teeth to fight Unfair Trading Practices, and this gain must not be reversed.

Finally, Feedback calls on supermarkets to relax cosmetic standards on their core product ranges, pay farmers a good price for their produce, stop punishing their suppliers in cases of undersupply, and flexibly market gluts of produce. WRAP’s figures show that a worrying amount of produce is still being wasted, despite the launch of wonky veg ranges – retailers need to use wonky veg ranges to test their consumers’ acceptance of lower cosmetic specs, and then relax cosmetic specs for their core product lines accordingly.

The fight against food waste on farms continues! Want to witness the food waste first hand? Click here to get involved in one of our gleaning days.

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a Week at Feedback

15th Jul 19 by Ella Jarvis, Feedback Work Experience

A week in the life of Feedback work experience: Ella Jarvis reflects on her time in the office.

Ella Jarvis spent a week on work experience at Feedback, she reflects on her time working with the Feedback team.

Before my time at Feedback I had some knowledge on the devastating effects that climate change is having on our planet, due to my study of A level Geography. However, I had little knowledge on how our current food system has been a major factor that has driven these changes. Through my work experience I have gained so much knowledge regarding the issues caused by the food system and it has given me the opportunity to realise that this system needs to soon change to become sustainable.

The new knowledge and experience gained during my time at Feedback has meant that I thoroughly enjoyed my week here. I was given the opportunity to work with Claire, Food Citizens Project Manager, to help her design programmes which are going to take place in schools and I also worked with James, Project Manager, as he was planning gleans on pumpkin farms for after halloween. This has not only given me the practical skills of using different computer software, such as excel spreadsheets, but it also made me aware of the wider problems that food waste is having on the whole planet and how our current behaviours (like having pumpkins at Halloween) are unsustainable. I was able to explore the different campaigns at Feedback and they have served as a big source of inspiration for the changes that I am now going to make to my lifestyle.

I believe that this desire to change my poor habits is the most valuable thing that I will take away from my work experience here and it has made me realise that action, even by a single individual, does make a difference and that if people work together globally the effects of climate change can be reduced and this is imperative for the planet to continue to thrive. Feedback have also motivated me to want to campaign in my school for changes in the canteen which I will pursue. This experience has made me realise that we must all become active citizens and with a global effort, changes to the food system are possible.

Thank you Ella for your hard work!

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Carina Millstone discusses the problem of food waste on Roundtable

3rd Jun 19 by Carina Millstone, Executive Director

Food waste is not simply a matter wasting money, it takes a huge toll on the environment. Guests discuss this issue on Roundtable.

Carina Millstone, Executive Director of Feedback, features with other guests on Roundtable, discussing the real problem of food waste and its impact on the environment.

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Pigs to the Rescue!

8th May 19 by Martin Bowman, Pig Idea Policy Officer

Waste food has shown to be an excellent way to feed pigs and chickens. Find out how and why UK law needs to change to make it possible here.

Pigs have potential to be environmental heroes – if we can only wean them off destructive soy and cereals. That means reforming the law to feed pigs and chickens on delicious, nutritious surplus food. Martin Bowman, Feedback’s Policy and Campaigns Manager, explores.

Veganism and people cutting down on meat has recently had a meteoric rise in the UK, with tasty plant-based proteins popping up everywhere. From the heated debates over the Greggs vegan sausage roll to supermarkets now stocking much praised vegan burgers, to good old fashioned pulses like lentils and chick peas, tasty alternatives to meat are on the up.

And thank goodness, because meat is currently killing our planet. Livestock production already uses up 75% of agricultural land, generates 14.5% of global carbon emissions, and consumes 36% of calories produced by the world’s harvested crops (only 12% of those global calories make it to human consumption in form of meat and dairy, hugely wasteful). If the world’s food system has already been creaking under the burden of meat production, it has only survived so far because the majority of countries currently consume vastly less meat than wealthy consumers in the US and Europe who currently take far more than their fair share of global resources. If every country in the world adopted the UK’s 2011 average diet and meat consumption, 95% of global habitable land area would be needed for agriculture – up from 50% of land currently used, and involving a disastrous expansion into forest-land. As countries like China and India grow their meat consumption, the planet will collapse under the strain and ballooning carbon emissions from meat unless we radically change course.

That’s why we’re calling for meat consumption to be halved by 50% by 2030, through our Cow in the Room campaign – calling for radical systemic change to save our planet. Get involved!

It’s not just about meat reduction

However, for the foreseeable future, some people will continue to eat meat – so it’s vital to reduce the environmental impact of how that meat is produced if we’re to evade catastrophic climate change and protect the world’s ecosystems and biodiversity. That’s where Feedback’s exciting new research from our Pig Idea campaign comes in.

Feeding surplus food to pigs is an idea that’s taken off in Japan, where the practice is widespread, and the product it produces is so-called “eco-pork” because it’s so much better for the environment. Feeding many types of surplus food has been banned in the EU since the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak, for fear it will cause disease – but Feedback has recently set out innovative proposals for how the practice could be done safely, building on Japan’s hi-tech systems.

The Pig Solution to a Big Problem

A recent study found that reducing global meat production dramatically, but rearing a small number of omnivorous animals like pigs and chickens on unavoidable food waste and by-products would lower the land use of agriculture even more than a vegan diet. This is because surplus food and by-products never compete directly for arable land with human edible crops. This could ease pressure on deforestation, protecting rainforests which are vital for fostering biodiversity and protecting the planet from climate change. As a result, humans could eat a small amount of meat and eggs alongside a tasty diet rich in plant-based proteins.

Feedback’s recent research as part of the REFRESH programme has found that if the UK only fed pigs* on feed made from available by-products and surplus food, there would still be enough pig production to allow 100g of pork per person every ten days. For France, there would be 100g of pork per person per week. This would ensure that pigfeed did not compete with food crops that could be eaten directly by humans, and most importantly, that it doesn’t raise pressure on deforestation through demand for crops like soya. What does 100g of pork look like? It would look like one of these four steaks so on average, each person could have one of these once every 7-10 days (if they wanted to). Tasty! Having far less, more ecologically produced meat, could also raise animal welfare (particularly as so many pig farmers’ cost pressures come from the high cost of conventional feed).

Even in the current food system, feeding pigs on surplus food in Europe could lead to an estimated annual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 5.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. This is equal to the greenhouse gas emissions saved by taking 3 million UK passenger vehicles off the road, or stopping 13,428,226 barrels of oil being burned. This is in large part because it would displace the need to import crops like soya which are currently common in pigfeed and drive deforestation. Another study came to similar conclusions – calculating that raising the proportion of surplus food fed to pigs could yield a 21.5% reduction in the current land use of industrial EU pork production.

Moving to a better system

Individual behaviour change won’t be enough to solve climate change, so we need to come together and mobilise for political changes to shift our diets for the better, to save our planet from disastrous climate change whilst feeding ourselves on delicious nutritious food. Let’s push for a system where we produce less, and better meat.

Look out for: Feedback have been busy working on some groundbreaking research on feeding surplus food to pigs, as part of EU REFRESH – this blog post has some sneak previews of our findings. The detailed report with all our findings will be available on the REFRESH results page in May. Look for D6.7 technical guidelines on animal feed.

 

*Note: Grower-finisher pigs, excluding piglet production

Image: Riverford Organic Farmers Ltd
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Gleaning Photo

The Future of Gleaning

15th Apr 19 by Dan Woolley, Head of Pilot Programmes

Gleaning is an ancient tradition, but what is its future? Dan Woolley reflects on how far it has come, and what's coming next.

Back in 2012 Feedback took a small group of volunteers to a field in Kent to rescue a glut of cabbages and cauliflowers that were not wanted by the supermarkets. From this small seed of an idea blossomed something as bright and beautiful as a field full of brassica: we called it The Gleaning Network.

More than six years since that first gleaning day, we’re immensely proud to look back on all we’ve achieved. But it’s important to also look forward: to consider the role of gleaning in the rapidly changing landscape of food, food waste and farming. So here I want to look at the future of gleaning. I want to share ideas on how gleaning can become a sustainable, replicable and nationwide project; one that serves the interests of communities, farmers and the planet we all share.

But first, here’s a quick recap of what’s happened in the world of gleaning thus far.

Gleaning past and present

For as long as human beings have grown crops, there have been times of surplus; such is the variability of weather. Gleaning – whereby a farmer allows people onto their land to gather leftover crops or grain – seems to have arisen as both a practical and an equitable response to dealing with such instances of surplus. No one knows for sure when and where the practice originated, but we do know it’s referenced in the Old Testament. “Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest… you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger.” (Levictus 9:9-10).

Fast forward to the 21st century, food surpluses still exist – only they no longer occur sporadically, unpredictably, or at small-scale. Instead, overproduction and waste is embedded into our agricultural systems, as a rational response by farmers to the need to guarantee their supply for capricious supermarket buyers.

Yet growing all this food consumes vast quantities of water, energy and fertiliser (as well, of course, as land), while exhausting our soil fertility.

2012: step forward, Olympians

In 2012, as our research was beginning to reveal the sheer scale of waste which can occur on farms, we decided that gleaning was needed once again. While we at Feedback have always maintained that redistribution is not, in itself, a solution to food waste, we knew that the efforts of food redistribution organisations were hindered and frustrated by a lack of access to fresh, nutritious food. It is worth adding that, sadly, redistribution agencies are all too often used by supermarkets and other food businesses as a dumping ground for cheap, poor quality, low nutrition food.

We believed, too, that gleaning had an important role beyond redistribution – one focused on the deeper systemic problems and the longer-term solutions. While food waste was slowly making its way onto the radar of both policymakers and the public, farm-level food waste was almost always absent from the conversation. The Gleaning Network sought to address this in a number of ways. By working with farmers to understand the drivers of food waste and the imbalances of power. By taking large numbers of volunteers to farms to witness first hand the scale of food waste. And by working with the media at every level we have been able to bring evidence and stories into the spotlight.

From small acorns…

The Gleaning Network has now worked with over 60 farmers and 2,000 volunteers to rescue more than 400 tonnes of fruits and vegetables. We’ve been truly inspired by so many of those people. By the volunteers who turn out in rain, sleet and driving winds to spend their day plucking kale and brassica from muddy fields (people of north west England, we salute you!). By those farmers who time and again open their fields to our volunteers, donating their time and support to the cause and their vegetables and fruits to those in need. By the college student who, surrounded by endless rows of food waste, put the situation into beautifully simple words: “food waste is crazy!” You have all been inspirational.

There are still also many people whom we have not worked with. These include the thousands of people who have signed up to our gleaning volunteer list, but who live in parts of the UK where gleaning has yet to take root. They also include the several dozen people who have written to us over the last six years to express interest in setting up a gleaning hub in their region. We’ve always wished we were able to offer more support to all these people. The reality, however, is that it simply hasn’t been possible – until now.

Community-led Gleaning

We know from the conversations we’ve had in the field, that gleaning has often been a focal point around which communities can (re)connect. We believe the time is now right for Feedback to help communities to take the lead:

  • In 2019 we will offer support and training for a number of community groups in England (for groups in Scotland, Wales and N.I., please see below), giving them the knowledge and experience they need to setup and run their own local/regional gleaning project.
  • Here we use the term ‘community group’ in its broadest sense: we are interested to work with groups, organisations, projects and enterprises of all shapes and sizes. The formal/legal structure of your group is at this point less important than your enthusiasm!
  • As part of this project we will create a bespoke gleaning website which will host a range of resources. We envisage that these resources will be made available for use by groups throughout the UK (not only those in England) and potentially beyond.
  • We will also explore ways in which these new gleaning groups can support and share knowledge with one another.

If you are interested to find out more about any of these ideas, or to register an interest in community-led gleaning, we’d love to hear from you. You can fill in the form by clicking here to express your interest.

Thank you – it’s been an amazing journey so far, and we can’t wait for the next chapter.

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Help us reveal the scale of Europe’s farm food waste

28th Mar 19 by Martin Bowman, Pig Idea Policy Officer and Stakeholder Coordinator

Tackling food waste on farms now has a deadline for action. Find out more about the problem of farm food waste and what you can do about it.

We have until the 4th April to stop the EU excluding the millions of tonnes of food wasted on farms from EU measurement and action. Martin Bowman, Feedback campaigner on farm food waste, explores why farms shouldn’t be sidelined – and how you can take action, in particular if you are an EU citizen outside the UK.

How much fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables which could have been eaten lie rotting in fields around the EU, or are ploughed back into the soil? According to Feedback’s research and experience working with farms, the answer can be enormous, yet so far EU governments have resisted steps to measure farm-level waste so it can be properly tackled.

WRAP recently estimated that the UK’s food waste on farms was a whopping 2.5 million tonnes of food, 20% of the food wasted in the country. But the UK, too, needs far better data if it wants to seriously tackle food waste on farms (currently it relies on informed estimates) – and whatever the UK’s future relationship with the EU, progress in Europe usually helps drives change in the UK.

Our hopes were raised last year when the EU agreed sweeping reforms to its waste legislation, with food waste policies introduced for the first time. A huge cross-European campaign called for the EU to create compulsory targets for EU countries to halve their food waste from farm to fork by 2030. Feedback worked with a coalition formed by This Is Rubbish of 67 groups from 18 EU countries and thousands of petition signatories to build momentum for EU action. But member states of the European Council blocked or watered down most of these measures. The Directive that was eventually agreed on was still a big step in the right direction – although it only called on EU countries to voluntarily commit to halve their food waste (and then, only at retail and consumer level), leaving it largely up to member states whether they take ambitious action or not. However, a significant breakthrough was the requirement on EU countries to measure and report their food waste.

Keeping it secret

Generally, whereas we know a lot about plastics and other recycling, food waste, where it occurs and what happens to it, has been shrouded in mystery. Now, from 2020 onwards, EU countries will be required to create robust data on their food waste levels in manufacturing, retail, catering and households sectors, shining a hugely useful light into the current darkness. Finally, we’ll know how much food is actually wasted, where and why.

Yet waste on farms is set to remain shrouded in darkness. The EU have just published their framework for EU countries to measure and report their food waste, and they have excluded in-field food waste. This is a disaster, given estimates put the proportion of EU food waste which occurs on farms at between 11% and 34% – between 10 and 47 million tonnes.

That’s a huge quantity of food – and the emissions, waste and soil fertility which went into producing it – which would be effectively sidelined from international action unless we convince the Commission to change track.

A problem of framing?

Again and again in the international literature on food waste, studies talk as if so-called “food loss” (a technical term for food waste at production level) is firstly only a problem in poorer countries, and secondly a problem which results solely from inadequate infrastructure like cool storage, which has technical solutions. This conveniently obscures that in rich countries there is a comparably large quantity of food waste on farms, and it is largely due to power relations between farmers and their buyers – retailers and middlemen. Feedback’s reports on UK farmers and on international farmers supplying Europe found evidence that farmers were being forced to waste food due to a mixture of cosmetic rejections of food for being the wrong size, shape or colour, unfair practices like last minute order cancellations, and fear of losing contracts in cases of undersupply leading to systemic overproduction and occasional price crashes. We’ve seen first hand through our Gleaning Network the truly stunning quantities of nutritious food that can be simply left in the field.

In short, the risks and costs of food waste are being dumped onto farmers – causing them a massive loss of money, time and resources wasting food they’ve toiled in the fields to grow. This food waste causes a huge loss of edible nutritious food – our UK study estimated that 2-4 million people could be fed their 5 a day of fruit and veg all year from the food wasted on UK farms annually. With estimates that England could run short of water in 25 years, British soil has only 100 harvests left unless degradation is reversed, and with the UN warning we have 12 years to avert disastrous levels of climate change, we need urgent action on food waste to avert catastrophe.

Time for change

Keeping Europe in the dark about farm food waste will harm EU farmers who’ll continue having the costs and risks of food waste dumped on them, prevent edible food getting to people who need it, and harm the environment. We can’t allow that to happen.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Safe Food Advocacy Europe to ask people across Europe to respond to the Commission’s consultation, to urge them not to exclude farms from EU food waste measurement and reporting.

Please take action! (Particularly if you’re an EU resident outside the UK). Click here for our guide to completing the consultation!

 

 

 

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Come Dine Sustainably

4th Jan 19 by Isobella, Feedback volunteer

Keen advocate for ending food waste, Isobella arranged an insightful evening with delicious food made from surplus and salvaged ingredients.

One evening, seven friends gathered in a student flat in growing anticipation of what on earth they would be concocting for their supper. All they knew was that it was a ‘sustainable’ evening of food innovation.

Waste not

The array of potential ingredients were laid out, including excess fruit and veg salvaged from a local greengrocers (by Feedback’s Gleaning Network coordinator Heather), scraps from the fridge and a few dry, cupboard items. Items of interest included pumpkin, plantain & pomegranate…and some suspicious looking surplus wine.

Teams of 2 were formed for starter, main and dessert and the eager cooks competed for ingredients as they plotted what to make. This was a perfect number for us, as it worked in the space and quantities we had. The criteria was to make something delicious, producing as little waste as possible, and minimise food miles. In the end, no one bought any extra ingredients – all the courses were formed from the original stocks, which was amazing!

Let’s get cooking

It was such a fun atmosphere whilst everyone was cooking and crafting their dishes, especially in utilising all components of an item. The starter team were the most creative with presentation, utilising the pineapple as a vessel for their pomegranate chutney and salsa, accompanied by plantain fried in Toast beer – a wonderful product which we all loved, which uses surplus bread to produce a delicious brew.The main course won on taste, with curried cauliflower, veggie fritters and a red lentil dahl, followed by pumpkin pie with banana and beetroot swirl ice cream for dessert – a beautiful harmony of fruit and veg! We created sub-categories under ‘food’ and ‘sustainability’ including taste, texture, quantity of waste and environmental impact to name a few for the recipients to vote on after each course.

More than just eating

Throughout the evening we played games including ‘guess who – the food waste version’, in which we each had a food item stuck to our heads which others had describe what they would do if they had surplus amounts of that item to help them guess. Discussions were also prompted by real life scenarios in which decisions about minimising food waste were chewed over. It was really great to be able to have intentional conversation surrounding food and how we can buy, cook and eat more consciously and sustainably, after we had proven to ourselves how much could be done when you have imagination and intention.

All in all, everyone was really impressed and proud of how inventive they had been, and the joy that it is to share wholesome, home-made food with friends. I firmly believe that seeds were planted that evening, and that each person left feeling inspired, well-nourished and encouraged to cook from scratch and from scraps and better understand the journey their food has taken before it gets to the plate.

I hope this acts as an encouragement for others to host their own, with friends or strangers – you can be the catalyst!

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Desperately seeking climate ambition

12th Dec 18 by Jessica Sinclair Taylor

Why food and the food supply chain needs to be addressed as a part of the solution for climate change.

“There’s a need to raise ambition…”

This phrase seemed to echo in the corridors and meeting rooms of the UN’s latest round of climate change negotiations. This is code for change is not coming fast enough, and it will soon be too late.

The prevailing mood during the first week of the conference, despite many exciting projects and innovative science, seemed to be one of grim determination. Clinging to hope against the odds and against mounting evidence that time is running short to address climate change and prevent dangerous levels of warming.

When we need to be so ambitious, it seemed incredulous that the host government were promoting ‘clean coal’ whilst nearly everybody agrees that the best place for coal is in the ground. The statement of António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, sounded bleak and almost despairing when he said that the time had come for civil society to turn to sub-national governments and cities to take forward the standard for ambitious action.

So why were we there?

Feedback were at COP24 to try to ensure that amid green energy, climate finance and low-carbon transport, the role of the food system and in particular, preventing food waste will be a key part of the conversation about reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions. Furthermore, addressing runaway production and consumption of industrial meat.

Why meat?

We are concerned in particular with the mass production of meat and dairy by large global corporations, who could be termed ‘Big Meat’. If they continue on a business as usual basis, they will gobble over 80% of our carbon budget in 2050 to remain below 1.5° Celsius of warming. Look out for more on this from my colleague Carina Millstone soon.

Food, food waste and climate change

As far as food waste is concerned, halving it by 2050 has been ranked as the 3rd most effective response to climate change in a comprehensive review by Project Drawdown, and preventing waste is literally one of the low-hanging fruits of addressing food system emissions.

Despite the urgent need for action on the climate challenge posed by our food system, we were struck by the conspicuous absence of major food corporations at COP24. Sad to say, it seems that food corporations still aren’t too worried about their role in generating runaway climate change. They also don’t appear to be concerned with what regulators might do to circumscribe their more damaging business practices, such as the colossal waste that occurs in food business supply chains. I discussed this on a panel at the UK ‘pavilion’ (essentially the UK government’s stand at COP), challenging the UK government to push forward the trend towards transparency by businesses on their food waste. Most importantly, this must include waste in their supply chains, particularly on the farms that supply them.

What can policy do?

We need to ask our governments – regional and national – to use public spending to prioritise local, low-waste food chains. Why should a hospital in Devon be contracting a multinational food corporation like Sodexo to supply their patients’ meals, when they could be sourcing healthy, plant-based and low waste meals on their doorstep?

Food waste is only one aspect of how our global food system squanders resources and encroaches on delicate ecosystems, as well as contributing a major whack of GHG emissions. But halving food waste – at least – by 2030, in line with the global Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, is a goal that makes sense on all sorts of levels. One thing COP24 taught me is that it’s time for citizens to take matters into their own hands.

“We are now experiencing a man-made global catastrophe: climate change is the biggest threat of thousands of years” David Attenborough, COP24

Want to get involved?

There are lots of ways that you can get involved. Firstly, you can sign up to our emails to hear about the latest issues and campaigns in food waste and sustainable food industry.

You can make a difference today. Our campaign to address the problem of Big Meat has just launched and you can be a part of it. We’re calling it the “cow in the room” and you can find out more and pledge your support here.

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The food waste champion with a blind spot on regulation to prevent food waste

22nd Oct 18 by fb_admin

If this Swedish MEP is so worried about food waste, why is she supporting supermarket pressure to block legislation to address it?

Two years ago we wrote a blog about Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, a Swedish MEP. In many ways, she’s a food waste champion with great credentials – she runs a food waste campaign in Sweden and has contributed to a report on how more efficient food chains can help tackle waste.

But it seems her activism only goes so far – two years ago she was involved in an attept to block a European Parliament declaration calling for the kind of regulation that would really help to tackle food waste: laws preventing large food businesses like supermarkets from using their market power to force farmers to waste food, for example by cancelling their orders at the last minute when they decide they can’t sell it (Feedback’s investigations of these ‘unfair trading practices’ found they were rife in both national and international supply chains). You can find out about some of the ways Unfair Trading Practices both cause food waste and undermine efforts to reduce waste through industry voluntary agreements in the research of the EU project REFRESH.

Despite the best efforts of Corazza Bildt and some of her colleagues in the European People’s Party, the 2016 vote was a landslide, with MEPs calling for action on unfair practices: as we type a draft law to outlaw many of the unfair practices which can cause huge volumes of food waste is on the brink of gong through the final rounds of negotiation by European lawmakers.

But it seems Corazza Bildt and co are at it again – this time trying to delay the progress of the law, which  could mean this law goes back on the shelf, especially with time tight before the next round of European Parliament elections.

This EU law has been welcome by food waste groups, farmers and those who are worried about unfair treatment of farmers in developing countries – the only groups resisting the law, unsurprisingly, are supermarkets and their backers in the European Parliament. We’re so close to real progress on regulating our food supply chain to protect the people who produce our food, it would be a catastrophe if momentum was undermined now.

Now’s the time for a final push to help this law over the finish line, and help farmers waste less food across Europe and beyond. We’re calling on all MEPs, including Anna Maria Corazza Bildt and her colleagues in the European People’s Party, to support this law.

You can read our article from back in 2016 below.

A public outcry sparked the European Parliament to look into investigating unfair trading practices by supermarkets, whose strong market power allows them to cause farmers to waste food. The European Parliament is debating the creation of an EU-coordinated network of national enforcement authorities to prevent unfair trading practices from occuring. Disappointingly, one European Parliament member – who is usually an ally in the fight against food waste – is blocking this much-needed legislation.

The European Parliament is drafting amendments to a report that could determine whether or not Europe will implement legislation to prevent unfair trading practices (UTPs). Previous drafts of the report have highlighted the clear correlation between unfair trading practices and the overproduction and food waste they cause. These previous drafts called for a European framework and effective legislation to prevent UTPs across Europe, acknowledging the inadequacy of voluntary frameworks like the Pan-European Supply Chain Initiative in effectively preventing these issues.

Over a million people have signed Feedback’s petition calling on national leaders to establish authorities to investigate supermarkets’ unfair treatment of suppliers to prevent good food from going to waste because of UTPs.

However, despite widespread support for such legislation, Swedish MEP Anna Maria Corazza Bildt is actively working to block such proposals in the final round of amendments. Corazza Bildt instead wants an industry-led Supply Chain Initiative as a means for preventing UTPs, despite its track record for being ineffective in addressing UTPs and the climate of fear suppliers currently operate under.

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Swedish MEP Anna Maria Corazza Bildt runs a food waste campaign called ‘Basta Till Matsvinnet’

Corazza Bildt continues to lead a personal campaign against food waste. The MEP was also a key contributor to a previous European report focused on developing strategies for a more efficient food chain in the EU in order to avoid food waste. Given this track record, her fight against this legislation is a disappointing departure from the her previous commitments. By blocking recommendations for crucial legislation that would contribute significantly to reducing food waste in Europe’s food chain, she betrays her legacy of incisive work on the intersection of food waste and public policy.

Feedback’s research in countries as diverse as Kenya, Guatemala and the UK has demonstrated how large amounts of food is wasted as a result of unfair trading practices by European retailers. Last minute order cancellations and retrospective amendments to supply agreements often leave farmers with no secondary markets on which to sell their produce. When this happens the farmers receive no compensation and are forced to dump their produce.

Preventative legislation against UTPs would protect suppliers, in particular farmers, who currently face uncertain and risky trading conditions in order to supply products to Europe’s major retailers. Under such legislation, European retailers would risk penalties and fines for malpractice towards their suppliers, as they do under legislation empowering the UK’s Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA). Crucially, the European legislation would create a level playing field across the single market to ensure that effective regulation is in place across European borders to protect suppliers and ultimately consumers as well.

Feedback are calling on Anna Maria Corazza Bildt to lead the European People’s Party in supporting legislative measures to prevent unfair trading practices in Europe by voting for an EU-coordinated network of national-level enforcers. Anna Maria Corazza Bildt has the opportunity on the 21st April to vote in favour of legislation and in doing so will be following a number of other cross-party MEPs.

To members of the European People’s Party: Preventing UTPs in Europe’s food supply chain is one of the most effective ways to curtail overproduction and the wastage of good food and finite agricultural resources. We call on you to take decisive action to support legislation to establish a EU-coordinated network of national-level enforcers to prevent unfair trading practices.

The vote on the 21st April is an opportunity for the European Parliament to stop the European Commission dragging its heels with regards to taking action against UTPs and food waste and Feedback look to the entire European Parliament to push for effective legislation.

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@European citizens: want to take action? Tweet this article at MEPs from #EPP (European People’s Party) and make them know that you want a fairer food supply chain.

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Where and how can I donate my surplus food?

26th Jan 18 by Christina O'Sullivan

Got surplus food and want to feed bellies not bins? 

Below is a list of organisations who can receive and use, or otherwise help with, donations of surplus food. Some of these organisations are active only in London, while others operate in various regions throughout the UK.  For more information please visit the websites of the relevant organisation.

National

FareShare accepts food from businesses and uses any stock that is food safe, including those requiring chillers, freezers, and ambient storage. They products such as those with packaging errors, short-dated food, seasonal stock, manufacturing errors, damages, etc., including meat, fish, eggs and dairy products; fruit and vegetables; chilled food, such as ready meals or drinks; frozen food, or chilled food that has been blast frozen; ambient goods, such as pasta, tins and cereals; and bakery. They do not accept cooked food from events. They have hubs all over the country and the FareShare Go Scheme connects supermarkets with local charity or community groups.

FoodCycle runs community events to cook and serve donated food to those in need across the UK. They work with major food retailers including Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, and with local independent retailers and markets.

Neighbourly puts local stores that have surplus in direct contact with the charities and projects that can get the food to people who need it. Works with M&S, Lidl, and others.

Real Junk Food Project is a collaborative effort between catering professionals and activists to bring about a radical change in the food system. RJFP intercept food that is past its expiration date, prepare the food and serve it in their cafés on a pay as you feel basis.  There may be an RJFP open near you, or coming soon or you could open your own. Contact them via their Facebook page to find out.

Olio is an app that works with shops and cafés to reduce food waste. Their Food Waste Hero (FWH) programme involves OLIO matching volunteers with shops or cafes. They will collect any unsold surplus food at the end of the day and share within the local community. In addition, Olio’s app enables cafes or shops to upload information about surplus food directly. Local residents will be notified when the shop or cafe shares its unsold food, and they can message the shop or cafe to confirm collection. Finally, shops or cafes can host a drop box, a plastic OLIO box placed in the shop or café so that neighbours can exchange food without having to arrange for a doorstep collection.

Plan Zheroes accepts big and small food donations from restaurants, catering companies, supermarkets, food stores, stalls, etc. either regularly or occasionally. Businesses are matched with local charities who transport the food.

Too Good to Go is a food sharing app that collaborates with restaurants and food businesses around the country to redistribute their excess at the end of the day. Surplus produce is sold at a reduced price for the app users, who pick up their meal at a specific time (usually at the end of business hours).

Community Fridges exist across the country. They are run by different groups and organisations but all collaborate with local businesses and community groups to provide donated surplus food for local people.

London

City Harvest collects nutritious surplus food from all segments of the food industry including restaurants, grocers, manufacturers, wholesalers, hotels and caterers in London and donates the produce to redistribution char

ities.

Community Food Enterprise is a social enterprise. They collect surplus food and redistribute it to community groups in East London. CFE greatly needs surplus tinned fruit, cereal, coffee, cooking oils – fruit and vegetable donations would also be appreciated. They are always looking for volunteers.

DayOld is a food surplus social enterprise tackling food waste and food poverty in London. DayOld sells surplus baked goods (from brownies to cinnamon rolls to artisan loaves of bread) through treat boxes, office pop-ups, and event catering. Their baked goods are surplus, collected from artisan bakeries the previous day, preventing them from going to waste. Their profits become cash donations to charities addressing child hunger.

The Felix Project Works with supermarkets, wholesalers, and retailers to distribute donated food. As of April 2017 the organization will provide fruit, vegetables, bakery and dairy products, as well as dried goods. It does not

provide meat or fish, or accept or deliver supplies beyond the use by date.

Save the date café are an East London group fighting to prevent food waste. They turn surplus food into delicious meals and serve them on a pay as you feel basis.

The People’s Kitchen are community feasts held around London for people to share skills and food. The feasts rely on surplus donations from various retailers.

London Street Food Bank  A co-operative of volunteers who collect and distribute non-perishable foods for low I

ncome or non-income families. Also includes a group of volunteers who collect daily leftover food, such as sandwiches, rolls, salads etc. from retail food outlets and distributes them to the homeless on the streets of London.  (See also listing below)

North London Action for the Homeless accepts donations of tinned vegetarian food and accepts large donations of quality, fresh ingredients. In particular, they need regular donations of tea, sugar, squash, oil, long life milk, vegetable stock, tinned tomatoes, pasta and lentils.

South East

UK Harvest is a perishable food rescue operation that collects quality excess food from commercial outlets and delivers it to charities in West Sussex. They collect from all kinds of businesses; from fruit & veg markets, to corporate companies to film and TV shoots. If your business has excess food, you can sign up to donate here. They do not provide meat or fish, or accept or deliver supplies beyond the use by date

South West

Exeter Food Action rescues excess food from shops and suppliers and redistributes it to local charity organisations. They are always looking for new donation sources.

North West

The Bread and Butter Thing offer a deeply discounted food service to its community in Greater Manchester. They accept donations from local and national suppliers as well as from community members and take one off as well as regular donations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Surplus fruit and vegetables used in Kenya to feed thousands

26th Apr 17 by Edd Colbert

On average 45% of fresh produce is rejected in Kenya

In 2014 Feedback investigated Kenyan export supply chains and found that vast quantities of fruit and vegetables were being wasted due to strict cosmetic standards enforced by European retailers and unfair trading practices such as last minute order cancellations. On average 45% of fresh produce is rejected, and without sufficient demand in the local market the vast majority of this food is either dumped or fed to livestock. Farmers aren’t paid for what isn’t exported so wasted food not only means wasted resources, but also reduced income for rural communities.

Working with local partners we held the first African Disco Soup, bringing together people and surplus food to communally cook and celebrate the delicious solutions to food waste. Representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) joined us. We proposed the need for an effective redistribution system in Kenya alongside efforts to reduce waste through changes to business practices. Our report, Food Waste in Kenya, concluded that “in a country where millions of people are without adequate food and nutrition, infrastructure should be put in place to ensure surplus food is redistributed to those who need it”.

Following on from our work, a new project led by the WFP is using surplus fruit and vegetables to provide thousands of meals to school children daily. Its initial pilot scheme is currently feeding 2,200 school children one hot meal a day. Upon completion of the pilot the WFP plans to feed over 80,000 children per day. This program is expected to save over 1000 tonnes of food every year by paying exporters a small price for food that they would otherwise throw away.

How does the program work?

WFP collect surplus food from export centres, prepares meals in offsite catering facilities and deliver it to schools. They hope to eventually prepare food within school facilities. There is also talk of bringing in other actors to re-purpose some of this food into value added products. The WFP’s initiative will hopefully inspire similar projects to be developed in places where there is sadly both a surplus of produce to be eaten and millions of people unable to access regular quantities of nutritious food.

Redistribution alone won’t solve the food waste problem

Redistribution of surplus food is essential as it not only ensures food waste is avoided, but also provides people with good nutrition where they may not otherwise be able to access fresh produce. However, food waste is symptomatic of greater systemic imbalances in the supply chain and we cannot ignore the fact that farmers suffer when food cannot be sold despite being perfectly good to eat. Alongside redistribution efforts, the reduction and prevention of waste must be prioritised to ensure that farmers can afford to invest in their businesses and contribute to rural development. Businesses must take responsibility for the waste they cause in their supply chains. Supermarkets, large food brands and manufacturers all wield disproportionate power in the global food economy. The use of strict cosmetic specifications, unfair trading practices, and vague forecasting patterns all transfer excessive risk and uncertainty to suppliers and encourage overproduction leading to waste. Whilst these actors maintain this level of power they must equally act with great responsibility for the wellbeing of their suppliers, consumers, and the natural resources we all rely upon.

 

 

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Campaign win – standardised date labels!

16th Feb 17 by Christina O'Sullivan

In 2016 we brought our flagship campaign Feeding the 5000 to America, catalyzing the US food waste movement and sparking a desire to change the broken food system. Our number one ask at our events in the USA was immediate industry-led date label standardisation. This week we had a massive campaign win! Two major trade associations; The Food Marketing Institute and Grocery Manufactures Association, have released guidance on standardised date labeling! This is BIG and shows that pressure from the food waste movement has made the food industry step up to the plate and address this issue.

The guidance aims to remove the long list of confusing date labels used by retailers and replace it with just two standard phrases ‘Best if used by’ and ‘Use by’. A simple common sense solution to the date label mess that confuses consumers into wasting food – experts estimate that this confusion is responsible for 20% of avoidable household food waste.

This is a critical step in the battle to reduce food waste – all that is needed now is a push by the big US supermarkets – Walmart, Publix, Safeway, Kroger, and Costco to roll out this guidance themselves. We need to keep the pressure up to make sure they do!

Thank you to everyone who signed and shared our petition – our voice is being listened to! A massive shout out to the NRDC and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic for their vital work on this area.

It is so exciting to be part of the growing food waste movement in America, what a great start to 2017 and there is so much more to come!

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Feedback calls on supermarkets to cut food waste

8th Feb 17 by Christina O'Sullivan

We wrote an article for the Guardian on what supermarkets should be doing to reduce food waste. Read below;

As public outrage over food waste grows, almost every British supermarket has responded to consumer pressure and linked up with food redistribution organisations such as FareShare and Foodcycle.

But while good practice is emerging, supermarkets’ work with charities is barely denting the waste problem. Fareshare, for example, estimates it accesses just 2% of supermarkets’ available food surplus.

Sainsbury’s donated nearly 3,000 tonnes of food last year (up from 1,200 tonnes the year before). This sounds impressive but it is only 7% of their surplus. Nine times as much went to anaerobic digestion, encouraged by perverse subsidies that promote turning waste into fuel and fertiliser over actually feeding people.

What’s worse, the food that charities do get hold of can be the food they are least able to use. The overproduction of bread may be the most striking example. Figures from Tesco suggest that [pdf] up to 44% of bread produced in the UK is wasted, and only half of that occurs in homes. This means the likes of supermarket bakeries and distribution depots regularly have far more surplus bread than charities can use.

Surplus figures don’t even touch on the vast quantities of unprocessed, healthy, fresh food currently wasted further up the supply chain on farms.

With almost a million portions of fruits and vegetables rescued by our Gleaning Network last year, we know the quantities are vast. But to get a true picture of the waste we would need the one thing most retailers refuse to provide: full transparency.

In 2013, Tesco released a third-party audited report of food waste throughout its supply chain, but others have failed to follow. While Sainsbury’s has startedreleasing data on its in-store waste, it has declined to do the same for its supply chain. Morrisons, Asda, Waitrose and other retailers are even less transparent.

One of the reasons retailers are reluctant to publish these figures is that they would lay bare the perverse impacts of big supermarkets’ concentrated power.

Supermarkets are in a position of breathtaking asymmetry with their suppliers, from farmers in the UK and around the world, to food processing companies or butchers. These businesses know that unless they provide the exact amounts requested, at the exact time required and often in the exact shape specified, they’ll lose business. So they overproduce, resulting in huge amounts of waste when forecasters change their minds on how many pork pies they think their shopper will buy this month.

This asymmetry is now mirrored in supermarkets’ relationships with the charities that take surplus food off their hands, creating yet another barrier to efficient use of food.

Several of our colleagues who have visited food banks’ warehouses and kitchens have been taken aback by the high proportion of supplies made up by confectionary. Charities do not feel able to turn down food, but they don’t necessarily get the kinds of food they need.

A truly systematic approach to reducing food waste would see retailers avoiding waste in the first place whenever possible. Where they can’t, this food should be available on a virtual marketplace to redistribution charities, so they can make best use of what they most need, both in terms of logistics and the kinds of foods they supply. Several food waste apps including FoodCloud and Plan Zheroes are helping to make this happen.

Only then should waste that isn’t fit for human consumption be passed down the food chain for animal feed, anaerobic digestion or, as a last resort, landfill.

For such a system to work the supermarkets would need open up their data to food waste social entrepreneurs and others, in order to work out where avoidable waste is occurring and how to link up with charities in the ways that work best for them.

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Find out why Martin had 200 kilos of parsnips in his bedroom…

7th Dec 16 by Jessica Sinclair Taylor

Our star Gleaning Coordinator Martin delivered this amazing TEDx talk in Bath this month to over one thousand young people. Watch Martin talk us through his journey to becoming a food waste campaigner – including how he ended up picking his way through parsnips just to reach his desk.

Watch Martin’s talk and share it on Facebook or Twitter.

The parsnips may be long gone to great causes, but Martin has been hard at work all year with his colleagues and over 1000 volunteers, gleaning fruit and veg that would otherwise go to waste and getting it to hungry mouths.

The gleaning season is over for this year, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up on the fight against food waste. There’s still so much to do – from organising your own ‘Feeding the 5000’ to serve up some delicious food waste solutions, to joining our campaigning for supermarkets to simplify their date labels.

As always, the best place to start is by taking the food waste pledge – pledging to do your bit to reduce your own food waste and calling on retailers and businesses to do theirs.

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