Key points
Ever since, over 10 years ago, US President George W Bush offered up a high-profile hostage to fortune by standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with the slogan ‘Mission Accomplished’ as a backdrop, business leaders have been as wary as world leaders of declaring: ‘Job done’.
But when the UK’s leading food industry body reports its membership to be so far down the road to a 2015 zero-waste-to-landfill target that just 3% of all waste arisings (and within that a meagre 4t of food waste) were sent to landfill in 2012, then surely it would be safe to unfurl the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. Well, wouldn’t it?
The 2015 zero-waste target was included in the Food and Drink Federation’s (FDF’s) five-point ‘Environmental Ambition’ document, published in 2007. Its latest member survey, aggregating figures from 2012, was published in late February.
When the FDF’s environment policy manager David Bellamy says the FDF is “pretty pleased” with the food waste findings in particular, this is clearly a case of tactful understatement. “The 3% figure for overall waste compares with 16.5% in 2006. So we've made an 80% cut in the use of landfill,” he says.
There is a caveat: “Of course, the closer you get to zero waste, the harder it becomes.” Then again, the FDF concludes that the “vast majority” of its membership has already hit the target.
Economies of scale (Return to top)
The best-publicised examples and case studies tend to be those of the larger businesses, such as Unilever and McCain Foods. Unilever broke the zero waste barrier in January 2013 for its UK and Ireland operations. McCain has undertaken to reduce waste going to landfill to just 1% by 2015, although neither one was available to comment on strategies or, in the case of McCain, progress.
“As with a lot of resource efficiency issues, it is often the larger companies that are more highly visible,” says Bellamy. “They have the economies of scale, and they also have the clout with suppliers and often with customers, when it comes to optimising supply chains.”
As the FDF makes clear, there are exceptions to the ‘size matters’ rule. Organic cereals and muesli processor Alara Foods says it eliminated waste going to landfill back in 2008, claiming to be the “first company" to do so, and managing it two years ahead of its target.
But at consultancy Oakdene Hollins, which compiled the survey for the FDF, principal consultant Julian Parfitt doubts that the 2012 data paints an accurate picture of the wider industry. “There’s a vast number of smaller food businesses, and they’re not on the radar for any surveys of this type,” he states.
“In the UK, we’re becoming increasingly ignorant about some of the wider industrial waste arisings,” he adds, pointing out that the last in-depth analysis by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was probably carried out in 2009. “That sort of data doesn't come through corporate social responsibility (CSR) channels,” he adds drily.
One question to consider is the type of message currently being sent out to smaller businesses when it comes to waste. The landfill tax escalator is rightly considered a “powerful motivator”, says Parfitt. “It’s a policy which has had a lot of bite, and there are higher rates for bioactive, methanogenic waste.”
This month [April] sees the tax rise yet again, this time from £72/t to £80.
Mixed messages (Return to top)
But even this could be considered part of a mixed, rather than an unequivocal, message when the current waste regime in England is compared with Scotland and Wales.
At law firm Weightmans, head of the environment team Simon Colvin points out that, unlike in England, there is now a ban on sending food waste to landfill in Scotland. The Welsh government appears to be heading in a similar direction, having introduced separate collections. “In England, the government is taking a step back, and relying on the landfill tax approach,” Colvin explains.
His view is that this divergence could pose a “considerable problem” to businesses with a “large footprint” spread across these three jurisdictions. In fact, it could be argued that a firm of this size would be most likely to pursue a standardised zero waste strategy across its sites.
On the other hand, a smaller single-site operator in England might feel that, despite the incentives, it was still being given a green light to continue with less-than-green practices in waste generation and disposal.
For smaller businesses, individually responsible for relatively small amounts of food waste, this may mean mixed messages and motivations. But the volume threshold for taking action on food waste has dropped considerably in recent years, and only in part because of higher landfill taxes.
Cost of waste (Return to top)
The October 2013 report compiled by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and Oakdene Hollins, ‘Estimates of waste in the food and drink supply chain’, puts the average ‘value to manufacturing’ of one tonne of food waste at a staggering £950. Some 12% of this is accounted for by profits and capital expenditure costs, 10% by disposal costs and the remainder by ingredient and production costs.
Rises in commodity prices, among other cost increases, mean that this estimated value has grown from £500/t in 2008, according to WRAP.
“For larger companies, food recycling is an absolute no-brainer,” says Dean Pearce, regional commercial manager at ReFood (formerly PDM). He points out that the average per-tonne gate fee for an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant stands at around half the current level of landfill tax, even before other disposal costs are factored in.
Where to start with food waste? The FDF's Bellamy says: “If we define the three broad waste categories as food, packaging and mixed waste, then it’s the third of these which seems to be the problem. We encourage source segregation techniques as the key to tackling this.”
As WRAP’s work in this area has acknowledged, he adds, there is often a process engineering aspect to the separation – and reduction – of factory food waste.
At ReFood, Pearce argues that food waste is the “linchpin” for wider resource efficiency efforts, and agrees that segregation is the key.
As a part of its Vision 2020 roadmap for zero food waste to landfill, ReFood outlines some examples of industry best practice, including the Oscar Mayer group. The group says that “maximising” zero food waste to landfill cut its waste costs by 16% in one year.
Pearce explains: “By segregating waste for the first time, companies start to understand just how much food waste they produce, where and why it is generated. Once you understand that, you can start to address the issue. If you can reduce your purchasing costs by just 1%, that represents a large saving for most businesses.” He adds: “There’s a business case for this. It’s not just some ‘green’ initiative with a cost attached to it.”
This type of saving has to be the biggest benefit and motivation for food manufacturers and, says Pearce, it ties into the growing CSR issue of food availability. “Once food waste is taken out, you’re mostly left with dry recyclables,” he adds. “They can be put through a materials recovery facility, which might leave a tiny residue going to energy-from-waste.”
Meanwhile, at Oakdene Hollins, Parfitt emphasises the fact that diversion of waste and especially food waste away from landfill is only the first step in a sustainability journey. “Zero waste may take you from the least-preferred to the next-least-preferred option in the waste management hierarchy,” he says. “But the really massive carbon benefits are to do with food waste prevention and redistribution.”
Some suspect, though, that with AD capacity seeing significant growth and different energy recovery options now absorbing some 19% of FDF members’ total waste, these alternatives to landfill may build up an unstoppable momentum of their own. One fear is that this might mean food waste being diverted away from human food or animal feed channels.
The complexity of options (Return to top)
At the same time, the greater number of food waste management options brings its own complexities, Weightmans points out, potentially involving Environment Agency prosecutions and cautions. “Different types of material, such as raw meat, will need to be treated in different ways, and the people who carry and handle that waste must be deemed ‘fit and proper’ to do so – and licensed," Colvin warns.
There must also be follow-up, he adds. Manufacturers cannot just ‘wave goodbye’ to their waste at the back gate.
This type of administrative and regulatory burden can weigh more heavily on small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which may have fewer resources overall to invest in waste reduction.
Here, the FDF sees great potential in inter-company co-operation. “These SMEs can work with larger brands or retailers, for instance,” says Bellamy. “There have already been efforts to do this across the supply chain, and it’s recognised that a lot of the remaining progress will come from prevention resulting from this sort of co-operation.”
A more holistic approach will have to address other important elements such as liquid waste, currently commonly discharged into the drains and sewer system. Individual company landfill targets may be tumbling, but there will be other, equally challenging targets for the future.