New insights on how to reduce household food waste can help industry target their activity and enable their customers to waste less and save money. The report released today from WRAP highlights that 2 million tonnes of household food is discarded because it is not ‘used in time’, half of which is thrown away whole or in unopened packaging, costing consumers around £2.4bn a year.
- Ensure packaging design and storage guidance help consumers keep food fresher for longer and build upon the work of Love Food Hate Waste’s Fresher for Longer initiative
- Maximise the length of shelf life and use a ‘best before’ date on perishable foods, where possible**
- Accelerate the roll out and increase public awareness of the ‘freeze before date mark’ label (replacing ‘freeze on day of purchase’).
Notes to editors:
*Link to Household Food & Drink Waste: a product focus
** Food safety and quality are prime concerns, but WRAP and industry have identified changes that can be made to product life and the choice of date label applied that help to reduce the risk of food being wasted, whilst not jeopardising food safety or quality
*** 480,000 tonnes; based on a conservative estimate of the food ‘not used in time that could have been frozen’
**** Link to the showreel of CC2 case studies
***** 10 Cities projects will take place in Birmingham, Greater Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, the Liverpool City region, Leeds, Nottingham, Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast between now and 2016.
WRAP’s vision is a world where resources are used sustainably. Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000, WRAP is backed by government funding from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
• www.wrap.org.uk
• Follow us on Twitter at @Wrap_UK