Campaigners at the Women’s Institute are behind an initiative to encourage supermarkets and retailers to do more to tackle food waste.
The campaigners say the UK wastes more food than anywhere else in Europe, costing the average household £470 per year.
Farmland roughly the size of Wales is being used to produce all the food that then goes on to be wasted in UK homes, generating the equivalent carbon emissions to one in four cars on the roads.
The campaigners say that if retailers and businesses managed to redistribute just a quarter of the food currently wasted, there would be enough food to feed the 870 million people living in hunger.
Yet, despite encompassing social, economic and environmental issues, decisive action to tackle food waste has seen slow progress.
'Avoid food waste, address food poverty'
Following the passage of the 2016 resolution to 'avoid food waste, address food poverty', the National Federation of Women's Institutes (NFWI) wanted to test whether or not WI members felt supermarket practices were contributing to food waste in the home – and what retailers could do to help alleviate this.
Over 5000 WI members responded to two surveys conducted by the NFWI in autumn 2016.
The first survey asked for individual member views on issues such as date labelling and multi-packs.
The second survey saw members visit their local supermarket to investigate practices on the supermarket shelves.
Using these surveys as a starting point, the NFWI produced a comprehensive report detailing the practices of a number of supermarkets across the UK.
A WI spokeswoman said: “Supermarkets must take action to tackle food waste through the food chain, so we want to see them stocking more ‘wonky’ fruit and vegetables’ in-store [and] publishing their food waste figures so they can really be held to account.”
