Chips face the chop
Restaurants urged to cut waste by shrinking portions
RESTAURANTS will serve smaller portions of chips and offer diners ‘doggy bags’ as part of a radical bid to cut food waste.
Details of Governmentbacked plans to save billions of meals from the bin emerged as the hospitality industry, alongside some of Britain’s biggest supermarkets, manufacturers and suppliers, will today sign up to a landmark pledge to halve food waste by 2030.
The UK wastes 10.2million tons of food a year – with 1.8million tons from factories in the form of processed products, one million tons from the hospitality sector, 260,000 tons from retail and the rest from households. The hospitality and food service industry alone throws out the equivalent of 1.3billion meals a year, or one in six of the 8billion served.
But the Government’s waste reduction advisory body, Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), has created a radical action plan to slash the roughly £3billion worth of food wasted by restaurants, cafes, hotels and canteens every year – 75 per cent of which could have been eaten. Its Guardians Of Grub campaign, backed by Environment Secretary Michael Gove, will encourage the use of doggy bags – which are common in American eateries – arguing they could help slash the 34 per cent of waste related to customer left-overs.
A Wrap spokesman said: ‘Offering the customer the option of smaller portion sizes for commonly wasted foods such as chips or rice before they are cooked might help reduce waste.’ Around 300 organisations and individuals will attend a major symposium – Step Up To The Plate – at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London today to adopt the pledges.
Mr Gove is expected to tell delegates that throwing away millions of tons of food is an ‘environmental, economic and moral scandal’, adding: ‘I urge businesses to join me in signing the pledge to deliver real change to stop good food going to waste.’
The Government’s food surplus and waste champion Ben Elliot, who is hosting the event, will say: ‘Climate change is no longer a buzzword. We must all stand up and be counted. We squander ten million tons of food and drink every year. Businesses throw away food worth around £5billion and £15billion is wasted from our homes. We simply must put an end to this.’