Technical & Legislative Update

This article has kindly been provided by our colleagues at FareShare, the UK’s largest redistribution charity. If you want to find out more about how you can play your part in the fight against hunger and food waste, including the FareShare Surplus with Purpose Fund, then read on…

Could your frozen surplus food be a lifeline for charities?

Globally, one third of the food we produce is wasted. When you consider the resources involved in growing, preparing and transporting food, that figure is even more shocking.

But, with a growing ‘zero waste’ movement, and increasing pressure from consumers, food businesses are pledging to take action to tackle the issue – redistributing their edible surplus to frontline charities where it can do the most good.

FareShare is the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, taking in-date surplus from growers, packers, manufacturers, suppliers, retailers and the hospitality sector and redistributing it through a network of 11,000 frontline organisations, such as homeless hostels, school breakfast clubs, food banks and hospices.

Jo Dyson, head of food at FareShare, says: “In five years the amount of food we’ve delivered to charities has tripled, which indicates that tackling food waste in the most socially responsible way has become an increasing priority for businesses.”

But there’s still a lot of work to be done. Jo explains: “WRAP estimates that, within the food industry, there’s 220,000 tonnes of edible surplus, 100,000 tonnes of which is easily accessible. Right now we’re only accessing 8% of the UK’s available surplus, so there’s a lot more we can do.”

FareShare works with more than 500 companies across the supply chain – from farmers to hauliers, hospitality chains to supermarkets, and big brands to small independent producers.

“Surplus might be inevitable, but food waste doesn’t have to be,” says Jo. "We have 22 regional centres across the UK, 15 of which have walk-in freezers – which puts us at an advantage because we can very quickly and safely transport large volumes of surplus food into our network.

“Frozen food in particular is highly valued by our member charities. It enables them to provide the people and families they support with a wider range of nutritious food and helps the charities reduce waste within their own operations, as it means they are able to cook only what they need.

“In just one year we’ve increased the amount of frozen food we’ve been able to get to good causes by nearly 60%. We’ve also been given funding which has enabled us to supply charities with additional freezers, which means charities can take even more of the frozen surplus food we have.”

Andy Stephens, head of sustainable food, COOK, said: “Working with FareShare has helped COOK take a significant step forward on our journey to reducing food waste. Having such a good partner to help with the redistribution of food that would otherwise have been wasted has helped us in our work to proactively reduce waste in our cooking process and also provided a solution when reacting to unexpected challenges. All this whilst supporting great charities and organisations who use food to care for and connect with their communities.”

It often costs businesses more to redistribute their edible surplus to frontline charities than it does to send it to anaerobic digestion, animal feed or landfill. However, this year, DEFRA announced a new fund to help overcome barriers to getting food currently going to waste onto people’s plates. As a recipient of the grant funding, FareShare is now able to help businesses unlock more surplus food through its Surplus

with Purpose Fund. This fund offsets any additional costs – for example labour costs, additional processing costs or the expense of packaging, storage and transport.

So what are the benefits for businesses?

“As well as helping businesses to make progress towards achieving their commitments under the WRAP/IGD Food Waste Reduction Roadmap to Target – Measure – Act to reduce your food waste, redistributing food to charities is a great way to engage customers and boost staff morale,” says Jo Dyson. “When you do the right thing, word gets out, and in this case it benefits everyone.”

£50,000 funding available through the FareShare Surplus with Purpose Fund

The FareShare Surplus with Purpose Fund* will offset the costs of diverting surplus food to charities and is open to companies seeking to unlock new or hard to reach surplus food, as well as those that haven’t previously worked with FareShare.

Your business could be eligible for up to £50,000** worth of funding (greater sums can be negotiated where appropriate for high volumes of surplus food).

* Defra has provided a grant of £1.9 million towards this fund as part of its £15 million scheme launched in January by environment secretary Michael Gove. This will help redistribution organisations across England overcome barriers to getting food currently going to waste onto people’s plates

** Any financial contribution made by FareShare towards the cost of surplus food redistribution is subject to negotiation and final agreement of the value in writing between FareShare and the recipient.