Covid patterns and food price rises helped reduce amount of food thrown away
The UK is not on track to meet international household food waste targets, despite a significant reduction in the amount of food thrown away.
New figures from environmental action NGO WRAP shows that household food waste decreased by nine per cent from 2021 to 2022. The reduction was driven by two main factors – Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, meaning less food was eaten at home in 2022, and food prices rose during 2022 and into 2023.
Following the decrease, WRAP’s new estimate of the food waste from UK households in 2022 stands at six million tonnes. That includes food in waste streams collected by local authorities, going down the sewer and home composted.
Of this total, 4.4mn tonnes was edible food, with the remaining 1.6mn tonnes inedible parts such as eggshells, bones and fruit peel.
Despite this reduction in food waste, UK shoppers are still spending £17 billion on food that is thrown away, which is an average of £1,000 a year for a household of four people.
WRAP said the results show that while it is possible to significantly reduce widescale household food waste in a short space of time, the UK is not on track to meet international targets under UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3.
Scale of interventions
According to WRAP, the magnitude of the drivers – a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis – were extreme and give an indication of the scale of interventions required to see further reductions. These were unprecedented public pressures that are no longer pushing down food waste to the same degree, it added.
For household food waste to meet the international targets, it must fall by 36 per cent by 2030, WRAP pointed out, stressing that policy and behaviour-change interventions on a similar scale to these exceptional drivers are therefore necessary.
Collaboration across government, retailers, brands, manufacturers, funders and the public are required, it added.
The Net Zero Transition Plan for the UK Food System, published in November 2024, identified household food waste prevention as a key demand-side action, along with diet shift, to meet net-zero goals. The report highlighted the opportunity to reduce and even eliminate food waste.
WRAP is using the publication of the UK’s latest household food waste data as a warning to the UK and other countries that unless action is taken on a larger scale, the UK will not achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 to halve global food waste and make it much more difficult to meet net-zero goals.
WRAP CEO Catherine David said: ‘While collaboration through WRAP’s UK Food and Drink Pact has propelled the UK in the field of food waste prevention, it took the end of a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis to get faster impact. This is a wakeup call that we all need to act: here in the UK to meet our targets, and through global co-ordination to share expertise and ensure this crucial area is a higher priority and is adequately funded. This is imperative if we are to continue reducing household food waste at scale.’
More action required
Since 2007, the first year of measurement and against which UK targets are measured, household food waste has decreased by 22 per cent. To achieve further action to meet the targets on food waste, WRAP is advocating for alignment across policy – for example, removing packaging from fresh produce – changes in the retail environment to help make it easier for people buy the right amount and use more of what they buy, and increasing public engagement to reach more people and support them to act.
“We all need to make the most of our food,” David said. “Government needs to help by introducing policies that level the playing field. Retailers also need to help their customers, whether that’s by ensuring loose fruit and veg is available, or that people are not financially penalised if they buy, for example, a smaller loaf of bread – and helping them make the most of the food they buy.
“And all of us as consumers can take action – noticing when we waste food and making changes to reduce food waste – such as making a shopping list, buying loose fruit and veg, storing things in the right place so our food lasts as long as possible.”
