WIREDGOV

The cost of buying and throwing away good food and drink reached £13.7 billion last year, new analysis by the Local Government Association can reveal.

The analysis, which combined the purchasing price of food which wasn’t eaten with the cost to council tax-payers of sending it to landfill, reveals that households paid an estimated £520 each for uneaten food over the past 12 months.

The LGA is calling on retailers to start making a serious contribution to reducing the amount of food waste discarded from people’s homes, in particular changing the way they promote the sale of perishable goods like fruit, vegetables, dairy and meat. Town hall leaders want to see multi-buy deals, which encourage people to take more food than they need, replaced by discounts on individual products, which offer customers the same value without incentivising over-buying.

Cllr Clyde Loakes, LGA Environment Board Vice Chairman, said:

“The average family in England spent £520 last year on food and drink which wasn’t eaten. That is a heart breaking figure in a world where hundreds of millions of people go hungry every day.

“While campaigns like Love Food, Hate Waste are encouraging people to make better use of the food they buy, the source of the problem is not being adequately addressed. With more than five million tonnes of edible food thrown out each year, way too much food is being brought into homes in the first place. Retailers need to take a large slice of responsibility for that.

“Buy one get one free deals, which give consumers a few days to munch through 16 clementines, are not about providing value for money. They are about transferring waste out of retail operations and into the family home. Retailers should scrap multi-buy deals which encourage people to take more than they need and replace them with discounts on individual products which will help reduce excess consumption and increase customer choice.”

The LGA is calling on retailers to set more ambitious waste reduction goals to bring them into line with the big improvements in waste management being produced by local authorities and residents.

Retailers and manufacturers claim that they have prevented 670,000 tonnes of food waste since they entered the voluntary Courtauld Commitment to tackle waste in 2005. The total amount of packaging waste being produced each year since 2005 has remained the same.

In that same time councils and residents have reduced annual landfill by more than 7 million tonnes and almost doubled the recycling rate from 22 per cent of all household waste to nearly 40 per cent. Despite those achievements local authorities will still pay more than £550 million in landfill tax this financial year as they put more than 10 million tonnes of waste in the ground.

Notes to editors

1. The estimated cost and tonnage of food waste was calculated using the latest existing figures on avoidable waste published by WRAP for food and non alcoholic beverages in 2007/08. This totalled 5.07 million tonnes and £11.2 billion (the tonnage and cost of food and drinks waste less the cost of 'other drinks' - which included alcoholic drinks):  http://www.wrap.org.uk/retail_supply_chain/research_tools/research/report_household.html

2. The calculation is estimated on the basis that the tonnage of avoidable food and drinks waste remained the same in the 2010/11 financial year.

3. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for food and non alcoholic beverages was used to calculate the inflationary increase on the cost of food and drink, to provide a cost as of February 2010. The CPI rate was taken from: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/TSDdownload2.asp

4. The cost of landfill was calculated from the tonnage of avoidable food waste and non alcoholic beverages, multiplied by the cost of landfill tax for the 2010/11 financial year

5. The total cost of throwing away avoidable food waste was calculated by adding the total cost of landfill, with the total cost of food waste. The cost per household was calculated by dividing the total cost of food and drink, by ONS projected household figures for 2011: http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/statistics/pdf/1172133.pdf

6. For further details on methodology, please contact elizabeth.spratt@local.gov.uk

7. Projected total household waste landfill tonnage (all waste types) and landfill tax costs to local authorities in England.

a. Predicted landfill was calculated from DEFRA Local Authority collected Waste Management figures: http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/wastats/bulletin11qtr.htm 

b. Tonnage sent to landfill in 2009/10 is as reported in DEFRA waste management figures

c. The annual average decrease in tonnage sent to landfill between 2006/07 and 2009/10 was ten per cent. This ten per cent decrease has been applied to financial years from 2010/11 onwards.

d. The predicated annual cost is calculated by multiplying the predicted landfill tonnage with the landfill tax per tonne.

e. Landfill tax was introduced by the UK Government to encourage reduced reliance on landfill. It came in response to the 1999 EU Landfill Directive which requires the UK to reduce the amount of waste it puts in the ground to half of 1995 levels by 2013, and by 65 per cent by 2020. Failure to meet either of these targets could lead to fines from Brussels against the UK of up to £180 million per year.