The UK wastes more than 1bn meals’ worth of easily accessible surplus food each year across the food sector, according to the food rescue charity Felix. That equates to 470,000 tonnes – enough to feed every child in the UK three meals a day for a month.
Charlotte Hill, chief executive of Felix, says that while grocery stores and restaurants are often blamed, they are a minor part of the problem. The vast majority of the waste, about 850m meals, comes from farms, followed by food manufacturing facilities with 178m meals, another 71m from the hospitality and food service sector, and finally the retail sector accounts for 12m meals.
Why surplus food goes to waste
On farms, unpredictable weather, grading standards and mismatches between harvest volumes and buyer orders contribute to the enormous quantities of edible produce without a home. In manufacturing, production overruns, packaging changes and quality control measures create surplus that cannot be sold through normal channels.
Felix recovers edible surplus food and gets it to more than 8,000 organisations feeding people in need. This food sustains lunch clubs for older people, supports food pantries where families can access a weekly bag of shopping for a few pounds, and provides meals in homelessness shelters and refuges. Almost half the food Felix gave out last year was fresh fruit and vegetables.
Industry examples and economic barriers
Examples of successful redistribution include food manufacturer Premier Foods, whose noodle nests that don’t pass quality control are repacked and labelled by a partner organisation. A similar project with 2 Sisters Food Group uses late-night surplus factory capacity to repack breaded chicken with minor visual defects. Supermarkets such as Asda, Co-op, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose also provide stock that Felix gets back out to every part of the UK.
However, Hill argues that economics often prevent more redistribution. It is cheaper for a business to waste food than to give it to people: the corporation tax system does not reward food donation in the same way it does a financial one. Public subsidies for alternative disposal routes – such as turning food waste into animal food or biogas – provide profit, creating a market that actively pulls surplus away from human consumption.
The Redistribution Revolution
Felix has started the Redistribution Revolution, forming the Food Redistribution Partnership UK with City Harvest, Community Shop, The Bread and Butter Thing, His Church, Feeding Britain, Neighbourly and the wider Felix and Xcess Networks. Backed by the government, they have launched a national programme to redistribute surplus food, aiming to triple the amount redistributed over the next decade.
According to Felix’s research, about 1% of all excess food in the UK food system is redistributed by charities. France redistributes about twice that, while the USA does three times more.
The plan calls on food businesses to make redistribution the default route for all surplus food, philanthropists to invest in infrastructure to store and move the food, and the government to change the tax system to make it more financially viable for companies to get food to people. Donations and volunteers are also needed to help rescue and deliver more food. Hill emphasises that while redistribution is not a systemic solution to poverty, rescuing good food can be a powerful way to alleviate the symptoms of food insecurity and support organisations helping people tackle challenges in their lives.
