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• Action: Create a London 2012 Food Legacy

“With shortages, volatile prices, environmental disasters and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problem – or thinks it does. But how the way we live now has created a global food crisis. This means we can all do something to fix it. London Boroughs are especially well placed to reduce the colossal amount of food that is wasted every day.” Tristram Stuart, designer of the Food Waste Pyramid for London (working with a range of specialist organisations) author and food waste campaigner, and member of the London Food Board

In the UK, households throw away a shocking 8.3 million tonnes of food every year, most of which could have been eaten. Globally, an estimated one third of all food produced is wasted. However much energy has been used to make food and its packaging, all of it is wasted when it is thrown away. Food waste is also usually wet and rots, so when mixed into other waste, it spoils materials that could have been recycled and gives off gases that contribute to climate change.

The Food Waste Management map shows what London Boroughs are already doing to help manage food waste coming from London’s households.

To address food waste from businesses, in autumn 2011, a new Food Waste Pyramid initiative has been launched by a partnership of organisations with specialist expertise in helping tackle food waste, and supported by the Mayor of London.

London Boroughs can help to promote the Food Waste Pyramid by championing this approach with businesses in their area. The Food Waste Pyramid works on the following principles:

Prioritise waste avoidance

• Reduce: Avoid generating waste in the first place: plan orders to avoid overproduction; maximise shelf-life through better storage; identify alternative markets to keep food in the human food chain.
• Feed people in need: Direct quality surplus food to charities and organisations that redistribute food.
• Feed livestock: Direct food unfit for human consumption to livestock feed: wherever possible, divert legally permissible bakery, fruit, vegetables and dairy products to farm animals.

Divert unavoidable waste to useful purposes

• Compost and 100% renewable energy: Send unavoidable food waste for composting, or to produce fertiliser and 100% renewable fuel for electricity and heat, or transport.
• Disposal: Avoid landfill where environmentally friendly alternatives are available.

“We work with grassroots charities to make a significant difference to the diets of people in communities in London and around the UK. But we need more food to meet this increased demand. We’re asking anyone who works in local authority catering, and the food industry in any capacity to look at what is happening to their surplus food and to ask themselves a simple question, ‘Could this food stop someone going hungry?’” Lindsay Boswell, Chief Executive of FareShare, and member of the London Food Board

What can London Boroughs do? Provide comprehensive kitchen food waste collection services for London’s households, and promote WRAP’s Love Food, Hate Waste campaign (www.lovefoodhatewaste.com) and the Feeding the 5,000 Pledge to help residents reduce food waste.

Also engage with the Food Waste Pyramid for London programme, promoting this to local businesses. To find out more, see the website: www.feeding5k.org