The Mayor of London’s FoodSave programme works with small and medium food businesses (SMEs) to reduce food waste across the capital. Hanna Ashley, Project Support Officer shares the projects successes so far...
About FoodSave
The programme offers free support to help businesses prevent waste and pass surplus food on to people in need, and livestock. In cases where waste is unavoidable, FoodSave ensures that the food is recycled.
The project is based on the principles of the London Food Waste Hierarchy. Funding comes from the Mayor of London, European Regional Development Fund and London Waste and Recycling Board.
FoodSave’s successes (so far)
FoodSave has been majorly successful in helping businesses reduce their food waste so far. Since November 2013, 97 businesses have completed support, and together are on track to:
- Pass on 964 tonnes of food waste from landfill annually
- Prevent 83 tonnes of food waste annually
- Save an annual cost saving of £366,000
With over 800,000 SMEs in London, providing support to this group can have a big impact. These businesses are among the most difficult sectors to engage with, but there’s been some fantastic feedback on the project so far.
Kate MacWhirter, Owner of The Imperial Arms said: “FoodSave has been an eye-opener and has really helped us identify precisely the areas where we were wasting food and enabled us to come up with solutions.” In total The Imperial saved over three tonnes of food and £10,000 pounds a year, with their plate waste falling by 54%.
Connecting businesses
FoodSave’s work connecting businesses and charities or farms has also been very successful. Borough Market, with help from FoodSave, has managed to establish relationships between traders and local charities to donate surplus food. In the first month, Borough Market donated over a tonne of food surplus to charities.
To find out more, please go to the FoodSave website.