As food insecurity rises, we need a renewed focus on food waste
Director of Corporate Responsibility, Sodexo UK&I
Food insecurity is a global problem, yet the world wastes a third of its food every year. Our Director of Corporate Responsibility, Claire Atkins Morris, explains the impact of food waste on carbon emissions and how local action can support both communities and the environment.
Food for thought
The importance of not wasting food was drummed into me at home and at school. Working here, I appreciate it all the more because we serve one million meals a day. If everyone was to leave their peas like I did, tonnes of perfectly edible food would go to waste.
What I didn’t learn at school was the impact of food waste on the environment. The way the world grows, processes and distributes what we eat releases greenhouses gases on a vast scale. Which means the food we waste does too.
Counting the cost
The connection between food waste and climate change is undeniable, and even the quickest glance unearths some mind-boggling UN stats:
- Food production is responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions 1
- The world wastes a third of the food it produces 2
- If food waste was a country, it would be the third largest emitter 3
Research from WRAP has also shown that the amount of food wasted in the UK could make 1.3 billion much-needed meals. This is where the issue of food waste moves beyond the environmental and gets far closer to home.
Growing insecurity
The UK government’s food strategy outlines the scale of global food insecurity: nearly 1 billion people in 92 countries do not have enough food to eat, and prices are rising sharply. We’ve seen the speed and scale of those rises first-hand, because food is a big part of our business. Add in the hike in energy prices and the impact on families is devastating, with 1 in 10 in the UK struggling to afford to eat.
Bringing the food insecurity and food waste stats together locally makes for grim reading. The Greater Manchester Food Security Action Network says that 620,000 of people in the area are in poverty. Yet the city throws away millions of meals each year.
No meal should go to waste, but that requires focusing on prevention and redistribution.
Sustainable food systems
Coming back to carbon for a moment, preventing food waste offers the biggest environmental benefit. If you haven’t grown it, flown it or cooked it unnecessarily, that’s a huge emissions saving.
We put a lot of effort into prevention, including buying wonky-but-tasty vegetables that would never grace the shelves but still make wonderful soups. Through our WasteWatch programme, we then monitor what food gets wasted, when and why. It’s helped us to prevent 437 tonnes of food waste in the UK & Ireland so far. We also use this data to make informed choices on menus, because it shows which meals tend to be the hot favourites on different days.
When we can’t prevent food waste, we make sure to redistribute whatever’s safe to use. They’re both priorities, because it’s not a zero-sum game. We’re aiming for net zero and for a sustainable food system, supporting the communities in which we live and work as part of our social impact pledge.
Local collaboration
We work with a range of charity partners to redistribute or reuse food that would have been wasted, and provide much-needed funds through our Stop Hunger foundation. Our national partner, FareShare, has been delivering the equivalent of four meals every second for the last 12 months.
We also work with The Bread and Butter Thing (TBBT), an amazing organisation in the North of England that runs more than 60 mobile food clubs. As well as providing affordable food, TBBT acts as a hub for other kinds of support like tackling loneliness. It shows that when you think and act locally you can have a positive impact, which is why we encourage colleagues to use their paid volunteering leave to help out. That’s everything from lending a hand in the warehouse to providing expert health and safety advice.
Shared responsibility
We’re a big business, but the scale of the food waste challenge needs all hands to the pump.
In our Appetite for Action report, we proposed how the food service sector and government could help tackle food waste and reduce emissions. We found that while many decision makers in supply chain and procurement weren’t even tracking food waste, 95% of them were thinking about starting. They recognised the link between food waste and climate change and were considering how to take action.
We’re doing what we can to help clients and colleagues make that same link because we need everyone to pay attention. Ask your friends what percentage of greenhouse gas emissions come from what the world eats and drinks – there’s a high chance they’ll be nowhere near the answer.
Better education
If we’re not thinking about local food waste as an issue, there’s a limit to how effective we can be on food insecurity. There’s pockets of great practice but there’s still enormous potential to reduce and redistribute, benefitting both climate and community.
That’s why we’ve called on the government to add food waste to the curriculum. When you tell children how much food gets wasted they are universally horrified. We adults need to feel that horror too. Because knowing there’s a problem is the first step to finding a solution.
Claire Atkins Morris is Sodexo’s Director of Corporate Responsibility.
Stop Hunger is a Sodexo initiative active in over 40 countries around the world. In the UK & Ireland, we work with charities to donate time, skills and money to tackle hunger, support good nutrition and promote life skills in local communities.
1 Source: The UN - https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086822
2 Source: The UN - https://news.un.org/en/story/2013/09/448652
3 Source: Fareshare (charity) - https://fareshare.org.uk/news-media/press-releases/new-data-highlights-the-hidden-carbon-and-water-cost-of-food-waste-as-charity-claims-the-issue-has-been-frozen-out-of-cop/