‘Joint Ambition’ on food waste plan

Unilever and Hubbub have launched a five-point action plan to boost business collaboration and customer awareness of food waste reduction efforts. This plan has been developed with the support of WRAP, following consultation with 240 organisations and public polling of more than 2,000 households, the ‘Joint Ambition’ to cut food waste is based around five core principles.

According to the plan the annual cost of avoidable food waste to the UK economy is £12.5bn, which produces 17 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year – approximately 3% of the UK’s total emissions.

The key points of the plan are focused on: boosting collaboration within the private sector; public communication on demonstrating the value of food; raising awareness of the impacts of food waste; boosting skills to extract maximum value from food; and improving the consistency of food waste collection systems in the UK.

“As a food manufacturer, we understand that more needs to be done to address avoidable food waste, especially as in the UK alone, one fifth of struggling families experience food poverty,” said Charlotte Carroll, sustainability director at Unilever UK. “That’s why, through our Joint Ambition, we are taking collective action to drive lasting transformational change in this area. With our exciting partnership with Hubbub, who are experts in food waste and behaviour change, we will be delivering a series of consumer campaigns via our much-loved brands, including Wall’s, Knorr and Hellmann’s.”

Alongside the action plan, Unilever and Hubbub recently launched a summer campaign aimed at encouraging the public to freeze, gift or cook their food leftovers before they leave home for their holidays.

The summer campaign follows research showing more than £500m of edible food is thrown away in the UK each year when people head off on holiday.

“The Joint Ambition has been created following extensive consultation with organisations working across the food chain,” said Trewin Restorick, CEO of Hubbub. “This demonstrated a huge desire to act on food waste and the importance of collaboration. The Joint Ambition will provide a practical and positive way of turning this desire into action and we are delighted to be working with Unilever to make this happen.”

Unilever and Hubbub said they hoped a growing number of organisations would join the Joint Ambition plan to help cut food waste and launch their own campaigns to support it.

“The Joint Ambition highlights the need for a coordinated focus on food waste prevention, communication, skills and the recycling of unavoidable food waste,” said David Moon, head of food sustainability at WRAP. “In this, it is really focused in helping households value their food and drink. Significantly, the Joint Ambition is also well aligned and contributes to the food waste targets and delivery programmes within our industry-wide Courtauld 2025 agreement. We therefore look forward to the Joint Ambition being achieved.”