Launched today our report, Counting What Matters explores the potential for food waste audits to significantly reduce waste in the food supply chain.

Households are usually blamed for the UK’s food waste mountain, but the reality is that the food industry is responsible for generating over half of the 18-20 million tonnes of food wasted every year.  Attempts to control waste associated with the production, processing, transport and sale of food have been hampered by lack of transparent data on where, how and why waste happens in the supply chain.

We believe a requirement for large food businesses to audit food waste would close this knowledge gap and strengthen preventative policies and action. Our research shows that there is more support for the proposal from the industry than previously believed.

Industry food waste is an issue in need of urgent action, yet report findings show there is a need for further research into the shape and implementation of audit. In light of this, We make three key recommendations for immediate action;

• Strengthen existing voluntary agreements, including Courtauld Commitment 3 – apply separate targets for industry food waste, implement a pathway to whole supply chain engagement and longer-term reduction targets in line with the EC’s call to halve food waste by 2020

• Pave the way for regulation if voluntary agreements fail – the government needs a transparent back-up plan if industry fails to deliver

• Strengthen citizen engagement and improve debate – there is a need for wider more participative discussion on where responsibility for food waste lies and what steps different actors should take in reducing it.

Dear Creatives,

This is Rubbish is hopping and a skipping on tour this year to a few events running a
food waste cafe, La Wasterie and afternoon feasts, with a 3 course menu of rubbish and
educational activity on offer.

This is Rubbish’s La Wasterie
Hungry for change? Drop into This is Rubbish’s La Wasterie cafe to feast on industry
food waste and glean insight into the world of edible excess. Dedicated to learning by
doing, La Wasterie will be running a mouthwatering menu for both belly and mind.

We are looking for an inspired menu artist to design the typography and artwork of our
menu’s of activity. These will be painted onto A frame Blackboards, and turned into B&W
promotional posters to be put around the communities within which we are delivering our
workshops and feasts.

We have a large marketing and media list, so you’re work will be widely publicised, and
you will become known for working with the best rubbish in town!

Nearer the time we will be calling for a troupe of characters who want to help serve up
the ‘rubbish’, maybe sing a song, recite a story and generally help make the feasts a
theatrical spectacular.

Everyone involved is invited to the This is Rubbish team working weekend to create all
the games, props, costumes etc, and of course have some wonderful gleaned meals,
Friday 7th – Sunday 9th June.

If you are interested please contact poppyflint@gmail.com by the 17th May 2013, with
prior examples of your work, link to your website etc.
The first event is Saturday 22nd June at Appetite 2013 in Walthamstow.

Counting What Matters Launch schedule

1.00-1.10:    Guests arrive

1.10 – 1.15: Welcome and intro to event and schedule

1.15 – 1.25: Intro to TiR, key values and objectives

1.25-1.30: Short film

1.30 – 1.35: Intro to IFWAP

1.35 – 1.45: Overview of methodology and findings

1.45 – 1.50: Introduction to speakers and the questions they’re addressing

1.50 – 2.05: Geoff Tansey; Going Beyond Business as Usual

2.05 – 2.20: Keith Riley: You are what you eat – so understand what you throw away

2.20 – 2.35: Q & A: speakers plus Beth Stuart and Martin Bowman

2.35 – 2.40: Overview of key policy proposals & TiR’s future campaign and research plans

2.40-2.55: Networking and Q&A

2.55: End

We will be launching our Industry Wide Food Waste Audit Proposal (IFWAP) research findings at the Houses of Parliament on May the 1^st, in a report entitled Counting What Matters. Speakers at the event include Professor Tim Lang and Peter Jones from Ecolateral. The research project, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation examines perceived barriers and opportunities surrounding the introduction of a mandatory food waste audit within the food industry, among food experts and policy makers. Such a mechanism could act as a driver of change, enabling the rapid reduction of food waste. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Full details will be released on May 1st. For more details  follow the story on Twitter at foodwaste. 

Last month, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IME) published the document “Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not” (WNWN). The documents is a call for urgent action to prevent 50% of all food produced in the world becoming waste. The release of this document also served as a catalyst for a media frenzy which explored the issues of food waste to an extent that had not been previously seen.

WNWN Overview

The issues of food waste were examined in what IME identified in 2010 as the three principal emerging population groups. These included fully developed (e.g Europe), late-stage developing (e.g China) , and newly developing countries (e.g Africa). WNWN states that food wastage within developing nations tends to occur primarily at the farmer-producer end of the supply chain, whereas in full-developed countries such at the UK food wastage is said to occur retail and consumer behaviour. Conflicts which may arise from the finite resources of land and water are preempted in the document. One such example is that the demands for land for use in food production is growing, thus competing with demands for ecosystem preservation and biomass production as a renewable energy source.

WNWN concludes with the sentiment that the UN must work together to help change people’s mindsets on waste and discourage wasteful practices by farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers. It offers the following recommendations;

More

Launching our new bi-weekly guest blog series is TIR’s very own Martin Bowman.

Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits, we’d like to go to town but we can’t risk it, oh.

Jarvis could have been singing about the rejected fruit and veg which is hidden out of sight, left to rot in fields around the UK for not meeting cosmetic standards. Too big. Too wonky. The wrong colour. These eccentric looking characters have been hiding in the shadows for two long, rejected by society’s demand for homogenous glossiness. It’s time for a wonky vegetable revival, and to embrace their quirks!

At the beginning of the film Food Inc., Michael Pollan says of the large, uniformly-sized, glossy tomatoes that line our supermarket shelves, that “It’s not a tomato, it’s the idea of a tomato”¹. This is taken to the extreme by Japan’s current craze for “perfect fruit”, whereby a single melon can cost up to £100, grown with geometric precision to even out any natural diversity – “The ideal is a flawless sphere, pale green with an even, smooth pattern of webbing and of course the all-important T-shaped stalk.”²

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With our memories of summer fading, the realisation is setting in that once again the UK was not granted the picturesque summer we always hope for. In fact, official summer statistics from the Met Office have revealed that summer 2012 was the wettest in a century. The meteorological causes of these weather conditions have been neatly summarised by BBC weatherwise ¹ and their implications are being revealed. While poor summers may immediately remind us of cancelled beach visits and muddy festivals, weather conditions this year have affected food production and further still, have led to huge amounts of food wastage. The fact that summer was not the only season in which extreme weather conditions were experienced in the UK this year exacerbates this situation. Record droughts in early spring even led to temporary hosepipe bans across much of the south-east of England. ² 

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Everything in excess is an enemy to nature. Hippocraces

This is Rubbish exist because the UK food industry is responsible for generating approx 60 per cent of the 18 – 20 million tones of food wasted in the UK every year.¹ Globally, as much as 50 per cent of food produced is wasted. As it stands, I have encountered food waste in large quantities at every stage of the supply chain in Wales and the UK. Both public and private sector policy makers are responding to evidence of the vast quantities of food being wasted, but change is slow.

The problem is, that avoidable waste comes at a cost to society and the environment. In the UK food poverty is on the rise, and globally, 1/7 people do not have enough to eat. ² Meanwhile, the food industry consumes large amounts of natural resources while contributing to climate change. Cutting food waste will reduce hunger and greenhouse gas emissions while lessening demand on natural resources such as water and land.

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This is Rubbish held a talking shop at Small Is Festival over  the 1st & 2nd September. A low key and relaxed info field hosted our pop up stall. With the sun, along came interesting conversations exploring political changes needed to prevent food surplus in the supply chain and at home, as well as thinking and talking about new food waste feast communication events. There is an  emerging interest in organising monthly theatrical food waste feasts in Bristol. These would act as a platform to engage audiences in the ceremony of food waste feasting, as well as engaging people with the case for political action. Central to such events would be the inclusion of political action that uses participatory arts as a main tool. If anyone is interested in forming a Bristol based food waste feasting arts activist group, get in touch! info@thisisrubbish.org.uk.

This is Rubbish landed a shelf in the shop of Crafted Chaos at Cloud Cuckoo land. The shop was a labryinth of hand made, hand drawn recycled and upcycled good exhibting for the first time. Within the wider festival This is Rubbish also made an appearence in the cloud of unknowing, with This is Rubbish newspapers, Feast brochures and a shout out about This is Rubbish in the discussion following the Best Before film screening. Now onto Small Is festival!