If you’d like to know the answer to this question, you’ve asked it at the right time. Scotland’s food waste baseline is hot off the (digital) press – and Anthesis work on food waste is cited in the report – ‘How much food and drink waste is there in Scotland?’

The report has been produced by Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) and will be used as a benchmark against which Europe’s first example of a binding national level food waste prevention target will be monitored. The report refers to the pioneering methodology developed by Anthesis’ Dr Julian Parfitt, published in April 2016 ‘Quantification of food surplus, waste and related materials in the grocery supply chain report’. This work improved on previous UK estimates for food and drink waste at the manufacturing stage by excluding 1.8 million tonnes of non-food waste categories associated with organic waste streams – i.e. stones, wash-water, soil and non-food vegetable matter from manufacturing sites. The work, undertaken for WRAP, involved a combination of investigative site visits and an extensive analysis of regulatory and other data sources. While the estimates in the ZWS report published yesterday currently include these non-food fractions, the report also indicates that it has future plans to improve Scotland’s estimates in line with Dr Parfitt’s work.

The ambitious target set by the Scottish Government is to reduce food waste by 33% by 2025 – both along the supply chain and at the consumer stage. This target is in line with the UN’s sustainable development goal by 2030 to halve per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels, and reduce losses along the production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.

Anthesis provides a range of services in relation to business resource efficiency, value chain sustainability, carbon footprinting and waste auditing. For more information relating to these services, please contact Julian Parfitt on +44 (0) 7766 143978. Alternatively, use our fill out form below: