TACKLING FOOD WASTE

Food waste is an environmental disaster as well as being socially wrong in the face of widespread hunger. All the energy and resources that go into growing, processing, transporting and storing food are wasted when it is not eaten. Food waste accounts for up to 10% of all global carbon emissions1; that’s more than four times the amount of CO2e emissions produced by the world’s entire aviation industry2 .

Shockingly, over a quarter of all food grown in the UK is never eaten. Research by the World Wide Fund for Nature and Tesco reveals that 2.9 million tonnes of the food that goes to waste on UK farms each year is still edible3 . That brings the total good-to-eat food wasted in the UK supply chain to over 3 million tonnes, enough for 7 billion meals 4

In the UK, food production and its waste alone create 35% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions5

The best environmental solution is redistribution of surplus food. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it is 17 times better to redistribute surplus food to people than the next best option, using it for animal feed6

FareShare Sussex & Surrey is at the forefront of the battle against this wastefulness. The vast majority of the food we redistribute is surplus food that would otherwise go to waste (88% in 2021-2022). We redistribute food to those most in need through our charity and community members. With every tonne of food we redistribute, we prevent the waste of 1.6 tonnes of embedded CO2e emissions.

We are equally committed to reducing our own waste from all the food we handle. This can be challenging as food sometimes arrives with a very short shelf life left or has been damaged by transportation. When this happens we send it on for anaerobic digestion to convert our waste into biogas or fertiliser.

In 2022, we also piloted sending some of our food waste to be locally composted. And, during the year, we averaged 1% waste on all food that came through our doors. In one month alone, our waste was just 0.11% (August) of total food volume.