It’s that time again, where end of project reports must be written and further funding applications worked up and submitted. While evaluating impact, we thought it might be worth sharing some of the media coverage that we got off the back of our Parliamentary Counting What Matters Launch.

Tesco pledges action on food waste 

 https://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/may/23/tesco-pledges-action-food-waste

 The industry must act on auditing food waste

 https://www.sharnoffsglobalviews.com/food-waste-065/

Food industry should audit supply chains, say waste campaigners

 https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/15/food-industry-waste-campaigners

 Calls for industry to audit food waste

 https://www.resource.uk.com/article/Futurevision/Calls_industry_audit_food_waste-3082

 Changing More than Lightbulbs

https://www.energyroyd.org.uk/archives/8364#more-8364

Food-waste agency faces further cuts to its funding

 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/foodwaste-agency-faces-further-cuts-to-its-funding-8612400.html

The trial against Belgium activists, now under heavy criminal charges for targeting a GM potato field in Belgium two years ago, has restated this week.

On 9 May 2011, 400 activists attempted to replace a GM test filed with organic potatoes, in an act of civil disobedience to rubbish the destructive GM trial and highlight the long term damage this could mean for sustainable agriculture.

11 people, of the 400, were arrested (some with and some without probation) and are now under criminal charges without any of their witnesses having been heard. This conviction poses a dangerous precedent for all forms of civil society action.

Bart Staes, Member of European Parliament for the Greens and one of the 91 voluntary defendants in the trial, told the court: “For 25 years I have been fighting for a fair food production system. We all have the right to healthy food and freedom of choice. This GM potato trial is part of industry’s efforts to push for a very specific agricultural model. “

The day before the trial, This is Rubbish showed their solidarity with activists in Berlin, who strung banners in front of the Belgian Embassy, distributing informative flyers and attempting to be hear by the embassy staff, who were alas a bit shy. “Social movements are not criminal gangs,” read one of the banners “Campaigning for Sustainable Agriculture…Is that Criminal?” read another.

“It is incredible that the opposition to this clearly inhumane industry has such draconian punishments,” Erasmus Müller, from the Berlin action on Monday.

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This is Rubbish are delighted to bring you their first pop up Feast since the People’s Millions funded Feast tour of 2011. We are embarking on journey’s a new, and have been devising many a new activity and journey into the world of preventable food waste.

On the 22^nd and 23^rd June, the This is Rubbish troupe will be running La Wasterie workshop saloon  at Walthamstow’s Appetite food festival.  Come join us in La Wasterie, to learn about food waste through participatory and hands on workshops, waste crusaders puppet making session, chuck out chain food waste games and the opportunity to engage with food waste on a  policy level, by pledging to support the This is Rubbish policy change asks.

For more information on Saturday’s La Wasterie and Sunday’s Gleaners Voyage Feast read on below. The Feast is ticketed, and tickets can be purchased here.

La Wasterie – Saturday 22

The Green Space, Walthamstow Town Square

 Activities run between10am – 4pm

Be prepared to be filled by a rich menu of food waste activities and workshops. We invite you to join us in our arts led educational saloon, La Wasterie. Here you will learn about industry food waste, where it happens and what can be done to stop it. Activities suitable for all ages.

Amuse Bouche: The Gleaners Quest – A treasure hunt whet your appetite for rubbish. Suitable for all ages. Starter

Starters: The Wastelanders –  A serving of fantastical puppets served from your own imagination. Mains

Main: Chuck-out Chain Game – An interactive taste of the supply chain with a dressing of discovery. Mapping skipping sites?

Dessert:  Just Dessert! – Join us in baking a Cake for Change, where each ingredient represents policy change and when we reach the total amount of ingredients for a large cake, we will bake it and invite you to eat it with us, to collectively call for policy change.

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;

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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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