Michael Gove: Food waste is a product of our profligacy

Environment Secretary Michael Gove delivered a rallying cry to businesses to urgently cut food waste levels, describing the current model of food production and consumption as 'extravagant' and 'profligate'.

Addressing business leaders at the 'Step up to the Plate' symposium in London yesterday, Gove accused the food industry of growing and transporting food in a way that is "scornful" of environmental limits.

"Everything about the way our food has been produced suggests a degree of extravagance and profligacy, perhaps even heedlessness, about the consequences of our generation of abundance," he said. "Food waste is the product of that profligacy."

Gove attended the event in an effort to encourage more companies to sign up to a food waste pledge dubbed 'Step Up to the Plate', a voluntary commitment for organisations to halve their levels of food waste by 2020.

Nestle, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, and Tesco were among the first big-name firms to sign up, but the government's food waste tsar Ben Elliot hopes all 250 of the UK's largest food businesses will committo the goal.

"We should make sure that we measure, as far as possible, the food waste that we generate," Gove said. "We should make sure that companies are accountable of the way in which they husband natural resources. We should seek to raise awareness at every point, and to educate every single one of our citizens about how we use food more responsibly."

The UK currently wastes around 10.2 million tonnes of food each year, around 70 per cent of which comes from households. In recent years progress to reduce food waste - across households and businesses - has stagnated, despite efforts from waste charity WRAP and voluntary initiatives such as the Courtauld 2025 commitment.

Government officials hope the Step up to the Plate campaign will spark progress among the business community, while a consumer-facing 'Food Conversation' week is planned for November with officials aiming to drive the same level of public engagement with food waste as has been achieved with plastic waste in the wake of the BBC's Blue Planet II series.

The new pledge encourages companies to "target, measure and act" on food waste, with the first goal being to measure and publish the levels of food waste they are responsible for. If firms fail on this first step, the government has indicated it is prepared to introduce mandatory reporting requirements for companies of a certain size, with a consultation on the issue expected later this year. Currently only a handful of large retailers and food companies report publicly on the level of food waste they produce each year.

Gove also released £6m in additional funding to support companies working to redistribute food that would otherwise be thrown out, part of a larger £15m funding pot to curb edible food going to waste. "That's an incentive, but if necessary in the future perhaps penalties might be required as well" for companies that fail to distribute leftovers, he told ITV News after the speech.