Matthew Pencharz, the mayor’s senior adviser on environment said: “FoodSave is a brilliant initiative that can help businesses reduce their food waste disposal costs and become more efficient. I encourage as many businesses as possible to get involved and both save money and help the environment.”
He said Johnson was working in partnership with the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA), the European Regional Development Fund and London Waste and Recycling Board to support over 240 small and medium-sized businesses in cutting food waste over the next 18 months.
By March 2015 the scheme aims to achieve overall savings of £360,000 and to have prevented more than 1,000 tonnes of food waste being sent to landfill.
The ‘FoodSave’ project will help businesses in a variety of ways including:
* Identifying where most food is wasted
* Providing advice on how to reduce food waste
* Helping businesses send food to people in need through organisations that redistribute food
* Helping businesses to direct food waste to feed animals such as pigs (where legally permitted)
* Where food waste can’t be avoided, support composting and renewable energy generation.
The SRA will work directly with restaurants, hotels, pubs, quick service restaurants and canteens, while Sustain will work with businesses involved in food retail, food manufacturing and preparation, food growing, farming, catering, street food, market stalls and wholesale markets.
FoodSave has already started working with a small number of businesses and the project will be rolled out to many more early in the new-year.
Food waste is a huge issue in the UK. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates that 15m tonnes of food and drink are thrown away every year, of which four million is from food service, restaurants and manufacturing.
Food waste makes up 41% of all waste generated by the UK hospitality sector.