The human food chain is very complex and political, particularly in a wasteful society such as our own. 60M people consume an enormous amount of food each year, and the numbers in terms of weight or cost of the food sold are huge. Sadly whilst many go hungry or have poor diets which can lead to health problems with the attendant societal cost, others are too well fed and in some cases demand a range of food to choose from, a process which is bound to lead to some waste. How we deal with this waste as well as waste caused in other places such as marketing campaigns is very important. The Government subscribes to a hierarchy of waste which places Reduce at the top of the list, followed by Re-Use, then Recycle, Recovery and finally the only element that does not get referred to alliteratively which is Landfill.

The first on this list is primarily a matter for consumers, but it does also place a demand on the food industry to use marketing techniques that reduce the likelihood for people to buy more than they need. Sadly offers such as BOGOF can lead to the opposite of Reduction.

Re-use is dealt with through schemes such as FareShare. I have written previously about FareShare and I am proud to have founded the FareShare scheme in Brighton and Hove, a scheme which has its origins in activities carried out by members of the Church I belong to, 20 years ago. Today we distribute over 400 tonnes of surplus food every year, feeding 1000’s of people in Sussex. Sadly, even after 20 years, there are still too few FareShare schemes across the UK. If there were more, it would be a great deal easier to oblige large manufacturers, farming cooperatives and Supermarkets to ensure their waste is Re-used wherever possible. The cost of an efficient FareShare is 10% of the value of the food re-used!

Recycling in the context of food waste is through composting schemes. Just as most of us are able to compost our household waste, FareShare composts its waste with the help of other charities and at one time the food retailers had massive composting schemes. However for food manufactures and retailers at this point the sheer scale of the food involved leads to a merger of recycle and recover with the emergence of large scale Anaerobic Digesters. According to this news report “A leading supplier to supermarket chain Asda has just opened a 1.5MW anaerobic digestion (AD) facility that will be fuelled by food waste from its operations. QV Foods, which supplies Asda with vegetable and potato products, opened the new AD site on Tuesday (6 May), at its headquarters and food-processing plant in Holbeach, Lincolnshire. The AD facility will take up to 30,000 tonnes of organic material per year, delivering power supply resilience and cost savings and producing a nutrient-rich biofertiliser to reduce QV Foods’ carbon footprint.” It is clear from the report that this sort of scheme has significant Government support.

My worry and the reason for me writing this blog (and other previous ones on the same subject) is there is no control over what a manufacturer or retailer might put into an AD scheme. It is entirely possible for them to put large quantities of edible food into the AD unit as well as items such as peelings and inedible food. It is quicker and easier for a commercial operator to put all of their waste into one place than it is for them to separate it. However we must ensure that they take the extra care to do so. Food waste in any system is inevitable, but ensuring that it is used appropriately is vital. The risk of going straight from Reduce, to Recovery, missing out Re-use and Recycle is something we need to ensure does not happen. A few years ago FareShare in Brighton was receiving donations from one well known retailer of around 30 tonnes of food each year. It was top quality food coming straight from their distribution depot. It came to us because its shelf life was too short to get onto the shelves of a Supermarket and give them a chance to sell it to you or I. The Company made a board level decision to go over to AD processes and one day the deliveries stopped. That 30 tonne was a small part of the edible food waste for them, and now all of their edible waste is processed by machines, not fed to people on poor diets!