Ambitious target to halve food waste in Wales by 2025
17th August 2017 | Recycling
A new target to halve the amount of food being wasted in Wales by 2025 is being announced by the Welsh Government. Environment Secretary Lesley Griffiths is to consult on plans for a 50% reduction on 2006-7 levels.
Though not legally-binding, the food waste target could potentially be one of the world’s most ambitious. The EU recently agreed to halve food waste by 2030 while the USA has a similar goal.
The aim is to encourage more food recycling but also less leftover food in the first place – so reducing the amount of food which ends up in the fridge but is never eaten and fewer leftovers.
Scotland was the first UK nation to introduce a food waste target, a reduction of 33% by 2025.
Promotional campaigns, a doggy bag scheme for restaurants and legislation requiring local authorities to provide food waste recycling points have been introduced.
The Scottish government’s Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham will visit Newport on Thursday to meet her Welsh Government counterpart and compare approaches.
Wales is leading the rest of the UK on recycling rates, and would currently place second in European rankings and third in the world. The announcement comes a week ahead of the release of annual recycling figures, with the Welsh Government indicating that an improvement is expected on last year’s rate of 60%. That compares to 43.9% in England and 44.2% in Scotland.
But Ms Griffith said food waste remained an area where “improvements can be made.”
In figures
- £210,000 to £188,000 tonnes of avoidable waste reduce 2003-2015
- £55om value of avoidable food waste reduction
- 105,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions avoided
- 55,000 five-year change in tonne of avoidable household food waste.
- Wrap Cymru found the amount of food being thrown out by each person fell by 12% between 2009 and 2015 and is now lower than the rest of the UK by about 9%.
More information available on the website below