In the UK, achieving the Courtauld 2025 food waste target would cut food waste by 40% by 2025, a key milestone on the trajectory to hit the SDG12.3 target of a 50% reduction by 2030. Action by individual businesses to ‘Target, Measure and Act’ on food waste, and to help suppliers and consumers reduce their food waste, is critical to success. An increasing number of businesses are adopting such an approach, but many more need to do so, across the whole food chain.
The Initiative for Global Development (IGD) and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) have led an industry-wide programme of work developing a roadmap for how the UK food industry will help achieve SDG12.3, consulting widely with businesses, trade bodies and others from agriculture, production and manufacture, retail and hospitality and food service.
To meet the national and global targets, collaborative and concerted efforts to reduce food waste are required. These need to focus on preventing food surplus and waste being generated in the first place, redistributing surplus food that does arise and diverting surplus (that cannot be used to feed people) into animal feed and high-value biomaterial processing.
The Food Waste Reduction Roadmap encompasses the entire supply chain from field to fork. It shows actions that large businesses will take to address food waste in their own operations, support their suppliers in taking action, and engage with consumers and innovate to reduce their food waste. The ambitious aim is to halve fifty percent of the UK’s largest 250 food businesses measuring, reporting and acting on food waste by 2019, and all 250 companies by 2026. WRAP will track and report progress against the Courtauld 2025 target and roadmap milestones.
