Food Waste

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on the debate. It is a vitally important issue and the Library research document is, I must admit, a mine of information. I only have five minutes so I am going to focus. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, has ensured that I do not have to worry about the sheer cost per household because she has given your Lordships the facts on that.

I am focusing on food waste in the home. I had a brief discussion with Lady Young before I left and said that I was going to reveal some intimate details of the Young household—well, not that intimate, but relating to food. I have here exhibit 1. I usually have fruit but this morning I decided that I was going to have Shredded Wheat with a few bran flakes on top, so I picked up this packet of bran flakes. Lady Young does not throw things away unnecessarily and it said: “Best before 31 May 2014”. I thought, “I’ll give it a whirl”, and it was perfectly okay. It had been stored in an airtight container; it was tasty and I did not notice any difference. I doubt that the Shredded Wheat was any younger than about six months to a year either.

Then I started to look around. I looked at a tin of baked beans. I do not think it gave a use-by date but it said that once opened, the beans should be stored in the fridge and used within two days. That is a load of rubbish. I have eaten baked beans that are nearly two weeks old. What prevents me eating them? If I look inside and there is a bit of green mould, I draw the line at that. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, made this point. If we threw out sell-by dates and put in smell-by dates, and if we threw out use-by dates and had “use by common sense” dates, we might start making progress in this area. I looked at a tin of salmon that has not been opened. It went out of date in 2015 but we are going to use it. If there is mouldy cheese, I cut the mould off and carry on using it. So there is a lot more that we could do in how manufacturers approach this, in the information that we give consumers and in education.

I had not heard of the Love Food Hate Waste programme but I think that it is brilliant. It made me think about reusing. I had my grandchildren down and I did the breakfast so I gave them bubble and squeak. “What is that?” they said. What is bubble and squeak? It is the great British invention and it recycles. It saves you wasting. Why do people use a bread bin? Put it in the freezer and pull out the slices when you want them. If there are any crusts left over, Lady Young incorporates them into bread pudding. Even our dog is not exempt from Love Food Hate Waste. Charlie the cocker spaniel loves cauliflower and broccoli stalks now, so we are all in on it—and it is important. It is a culture and an attitude of mind.

Regarding food, our council is changing collection and delivery. Only about 25% to 30% of households have food-waste boxes—very few—so we know that food waste is going into landfill, which is the worst possible option. Not everybody can compost, but our peel goes into compost and the small amount that we waste goes into the food-waste bin. The one area that concerns me where recycling does not seem to be done very well is cooking oil which, if poured down the sink, is really bad news. It goes into the water environment and it is quite hard to get rid of it. I was asking the council recently why we could not leave bottles of used oil out, which it could collect and recycle.

What else can we do? Love Food Hate Waste is great but I would like to push it into an area where I have an abiding interest, as many other people here no doubt have. I am a school governor in a primary school. If we educate the next generation to start encouraging their parents into good habits of cooking and how they use food waste, that would make a big difference. So my question to the Minister is this: what are we going to do about these very generalised sell-by and use-by dates, which contribute to the problem rather than help? Of course we have to have guidance on how to use and store food, but there ought to be a lot more common sense in it than currently. I am conscious of the time, but I hope that the Minister can give me a positive response on whether we can extend the ideas in the Love Food Hate Waste campaign into schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for securing this important issue for debate. Indeed, I applaud the influential work of this House on food waste, including the 2014 report, Counting The Cost Of Food Waste: EU Food Waste Prevention. This debate today, with all the contributions to it, highlights your Lordships’ commitment to addressing this pressing matter. I believe that we are overwhelmingly all on the same page and I acknowledge all the campaigners mentioned today who, of course, give a greater awareness of this issue.

Food waste requires urgent action across the globe. As many of your Lordships mentioned, a third of the food that the world produces is wasted. This is a waste of food, water, energy, land and money, and—as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said—it is an issue for climate change as well. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, both raised an important issue about waste: that of fisheries. The fact is that for years now we have been wasting fish stocks at an absurd and immoral level. That is why we, the Government, seek to address this by implementing a discard ban. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that we will keep strong.

Half of all food wasted in the United Kingdom is produced in the home. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green—and his wife—took us through what I call the practical common sense that most households in this country should adhere to. The noble Lord looks very healthy on his regime, if I may say so. UK households waste 7 million tonnes and spend £2.5 billion every year on food that could have been eaten but ends up being thrown away. This amounts to £470 a year for the average household. I checked on this because the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned £700 a year. This is for UK households with children. Both figures come from the WRAP report. That shows that not only in households but in households with children we need to work with parents and schools. We need to do more on this matter.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, also mentioned local authorities. We are all working on this and it is very important that WRAP will publish updated guidance in the near future to assist local authorities which want to introduce or improve their collection schemes. I will not go into waste collection today because we would have a considerable debate on that, but clearly this is an issue we all need to address.

The Government are helping households to waste less and save money through the Waste and Resources Action Programme—WRAP—campaign, Love Food Hate Waste. I, too, acknowledge the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Jenkin is carrying on the baton. It is very important that WRAP’s work is successful. It is about raising the profile of the campaign, with campaigns in 10 cities offering support to households to reduce the food they waste. This includes the development of practical skills through community cooking classes, guidance and initiatives to improve shopping habits and budgeting.

Retailers are also working directly with their customers. For example, the town of Swadlincote has been awarded £1 million from Sainsbury’s to invest in ways to halve household food waste. Sainsbury’s plans to spend £10 million over the next five years to promote similar schemes across the country—small beginnings, but very important. This approach has made a difference. UK annual household food waste has decreased by 15% between 2007 and 2012, which amounts to 1.3 million tonnes. The waste prevented would have filled 2,600 Olympic swimming pools.

Food is also wasted across the supply chain: 3.3 million tonnes in manufacturing, 0.2 million tonnes in food retail and 0.9 million tonnes in the hospitality sector. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, is absolutely right about dates. Defra and FSA published date marking guidance in 2011 to help ensure that dates are applied consistently. Use by labels should be used only where the safety of food cannot be guaranteed after that date. Most other foods should have a best before date only to indicate when the food is no longer at its best but is still safe to eat. We are seeing date markings to meet guidance. The noble Lord made a valuable point and we should all be mindful of it.

The Government have been working with retailers through WRAP to reduce food waste through the voluntary Courtauld commitment. Signatories reported a reduction of 7.4% in supply chain waste between 2009 and 2012, with interim results showing a further 3.2% reduction by 2014. The Courtauld commitment encourages action in line with waste hierarchy. It was very helpful that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, explained that hierarchy.

It is clear that the production of surplus food should be minimised. However, when good food is left unsold, it should be distributed to feed people in need. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that the Government and industry are working together to ensure that more surplus food is redistributed to people before being put to any other use. Signatories to the Courtauld commitment have reported a 74% increase in the level of food redistributed between 2012 and 2014 which would otherwise have gone to waste. We welcome the actions that organisations such as FareShare and Company Shop are taking to ensure that good quality surplus food gets to people in need. We encourage the food industry to forge closer links with redistribution charities, and support the action and public commitment on redistribution made by all retailers. For example—my noble friend may have mentioned this—Morrisons has recently announced that unsold safe food will go to local community organisations from early this year.

The voluntary approach is delivering results, but we want to do more. Following the Secretary of State’s meeting last year, a working group is driving forward work to waste less and redistribute more. The group is developing a partnership model to provide a consistent framework for providers and recipients of surplus food to reach agreement on working together. WRAP has also commissioned research which will identify where and why waste and surpluses occur in the supply chain. This will help industry to take appropriate action to increase waste prevention and assist redistribution.

There will always, I fear, be some unavoidable food waste. That is why the anaerobic digestion strategy is in place to reduce the amount of organic material going to landfill. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury was absolutely right to mention anaerobic digestion. If he wanted to raise with me more privately where the producer was proposing to take the landfill, I would be prepared to take that up, because it is terribly important that we ensure that landfill is the very last option.

By 2014, retailers reduced the proportion of waste sent to landfill to 7%, down from 43% in only 2005. Under the Courtauld commitment, WRAP has also worked with supermarkets and consumers to support acceptance of the use of imperfect fruit and vegetables. My noble friends Lady Byford and Lady Jenkin and other noble Lords mentioned this matter. We welcome the action by supermarkets to sell a greater range of produce in stores. For example, in January 2015, Asda began trialling the sale of misshapen fruit and vegetables at reduced prices. This trial has now been rolled out to 25 stores and covers a wider range of product. Asda plans to increase the range further in 2016. This is a very good example of what should be done much more widely. The fruit and vegetables taste just as good. I assure noble Lords that my misshapen parsnips taste very good indeed.

The UK is at the forefront in tackling food waste internationally. We acknowledge WRAP’s work over the past decade, which many across the world want to replicate. Liz Goodwin, WRAP’s CEO is one of the 30 champions in the new UN coalition chaired by Dave Lewis, group chief executive of Tesco, which aims to accelerate progress towards meeting the new UN target to halve per capita food waste by 2030, to which my noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, referred.

Defra continues to fund WRAP—£13.5 million for this financial year—to help drive forward and deliver improved resource management and efficiency. This includes devoting approximately £4.1 million to take action to reduce food waste and improve sustainability across the supply chain. I emphasise Defra’s commitment to all this. We want to go further. That is why WRAP is now brokering a new agreement, Courthauld 2025. It is an ambitions farm-to-fork industry commitment—I am particularly mindful of what my noble friend Lady Byford said about from the farm—bringing the food industry together to make the food we produce and eat more sustainable and secure and to reduce waste even more. Pre-farm-gate waste—I mention this particularly as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, referred to it—will be within the scope of the new farm agreement.

Significant progress has been made over the past decade, but we all want to do more. I am very conscious that there may be particular points that noble Lords have raised—

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I enjoyed the Minister’s contribution very much, but he did not mention extending the Love Food Hate Waste campaign into schools.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I think I said at the beginning that that is something for education, but if I did not say it, I intended to say that this is issue that we wish to work on. I will raise it with officials and with WRAP. I apologise because it was in my notes to raise it.

This has been a very interesting and helpful debate. I am conscious that I may not have specifically answered some of the precise points that were raised in the time available. I would find it tremendously valuable, if noble Lords would be interested, if we continued these discussions and if noble Lords who are interested have meetings with officials and with WRAP. I started by saying that we are all on the same page. I do not think there is much difference between us. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. This has been a fascinating debate, and I think we have more work to do together.