This comes after the government’s landmark Environment Bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday (January 30), reconfirming a commitment to reduce food waste and introduce mandatory weekly food waste collections, subject to consultation.
Announced by the Government’s food waste ‘Tsar’ Ben Elliot yesterday afternoon, the first ‘Action Week’ is designed to raise awareness of food waste and will take place from 11 May.
Urging everyone to get involved, Mr Elliot said: “I encourage and implore everyone to get stuck in, joining together and taking the fight to food waste. More details will be provided shortly on what we must all do to reduce food waste at home and at work.”
Grants
Alongside this, ministers unveiled two grant schemes worth a total of £1.5 million to help business and not-for-profits in England to come up with creative ways to tackle food waste and also change it into useful products.
The ‘Citizen Food Waste Prevention’ (worth £650,000) and ‘Value From Food Waste’ (£500,000) grants will be managed by sustainability not-for-profit WRAP, which works closely with governments, businesses and citizens to reduce food waste.
Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said: “The UK is a proud world leader in tackling food waste, owing in part to the innovation and creativity of many organisations across the UK – from educating the public on food waste in our homes, to making our supply chains greener.
“I look forward to supporting UK organisations who are taking up the mantle to tackle food waste and to create a better world for ourselves, as well as generations to come. It makes sense in every way – it cuts collection costs, saves the customer money and importantly reduces emissions which benefits the environment.”
Education
The Citizen Food Waste Prevention grant will award grants between £25,000 and £100,000 will be awarded to SME businesses and not-for-profit organisations who are inspiring the public to reduce their household food waste, such as through consumer education programmes on storing food appropriately and understanding their shelf life.
The Value from Food Waste fund is open for collaborative projects from organisations of any size which are piloting methods to create useful materials out of food that would otherwise go to waste. Funding will be awarded for revenue and capital usage costs between £20,000 and £100,000.
Grant application packs can be downloaded from the WRAP website here.
Projects
In 2017, the government launched a £500,000 Food Waste Reduction fund, which supported eight projects in England to redistribute 1,900 tonnes of food. The eight projects supported were: Action Homeless; His Church; FareShare UK; Fareshare Yorkshire; Feedback Global; Food in Community; Nuneaton & Bedworth HLN; REfUSE Durham.
Peter Maddox, Director of WRAP, said: “WRAP is pleased to be managing the Resource Action Fund on behalf of Defra.
“We are looking forward to receiving applications from innovative and imaginative programmes and projects that will have a real impact in reducing the level of food waste in our homes and making sure we get more value from food waste in supply chains.”
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