Speaking at All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group (APSRG) food waste event in London yesterday (3 July), Ms McCarthy said: “At the moment figures are reported at an aggregate level and we don’t actually have an indication of who is doing better than others which I think is important – and naming and shaming is the way to drive it forward.”
A former Labour shadow secretary of state for the environment, the MP said: “Tesco are the leader on reporting it voluntarily across their supply chains, but the fact that none of the other retailers followed suit shows that the voluntary approach just isn’t working.”
Tesco
Tesco’s Food Waste Hotspots programme has provided a blueprint on reporting food waste through the supply chain, Ms McCarthy said. But, the question is whether other supermarkets will ‘follow suit’ or whether regulation is needed to make highlighting of hotspots in the industry possible, she added.
“The government seems to be warming to the idea of food businesses reporting their waste individually. Under the Courtauld target it is reported as an aggregate figure which means you can’t see who the good guys are or the bad guys are,” she said.
According to Ms McCarthy: “We won’t know until 2018 if we are on target to meet the Courtauld agreement of 20% reduction of food waste by 2025.”
“I think if we aren’t seen to be on track by then then we should look at legislation.”
In terms of a voluntary or regulatory approach, Tim Smith, group quality director at Tesco, said the retailer had been voluntarily publishing its food waste data for four years and other retailers have, and will continue to follow its lead.
Mr Smith said: “It is a shared responsibility but we know that the vast majority of responsibility lies with the retailers.” He said retailers need to measure how much food is being wasted, report it to others and innovate.
Local authority
Legislative measures were favoured by Ms McCarthy, who also called for continued effort to push for mandatory separate food waste collection at local authority level.
However, Neil Parish MP former chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) indicated that he preferred an incentivised approach rather than enforcement.
Mr Parish suggested that council’s need “a real steer from government and I suspect financial help to encourage them” to take up separate food collection when their current contracts come to an end.
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