Hansard

I am pleased to open the debate, which has been shrinking as the weeks have gone by. I notice that it is now even shorter than it was intended to be. However, I hope that we have a good debate on the problem of tackling food waste.

The Government’s aspiration is that Scotland becomes a good food nation—a country in which people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in and benefit from the food that they produce, buy, serve and eat day by day. The Scottish Government is developing a holistic approach to food, covering how we minimise diet-related disease and raise healthy life expectancy; how we deliver fairer outcomes to Scotland’s most deprived communities, where disease, food poverty and hunger hit hardest; how we grow the food and drink industry; and, of course, how we improve resource efficiency and, crucially, reduce the amount of food that is wasted.

Zero Waste Scotland estimated that, in 2013, we wasted 1.35 million tonnes of food in Scotland. That waste arose in households, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, education, health and social care, and wholesale operations. We know that there is also a significant loss of food on farms, although that is more difficult to measure.

The Scottish Government has set a target to reduce total food waste by 33 per cent by 2025. We have aligned our ambition with that of the United Nations, and our target will put us on track to deliver the UN sustainable development goal of reducing food waste by 50 per cent by 2030. We set a target because we wanted to focus action all along the supply chain from farm to plate.

In identifying actions to reduce food waste, we will prioritise initiatives and deliver outcomes on health, food poverty, actions that support our food and drink industry and actions that reduce emissions. Fergus Ewing, who is responsible for food and drink as part of his rural economy portfolio, and I will work together closely on proposals for a good food nation bill, which the First Minister announced to Parliament in September.

The worst thing that can happen with food waste is that it is sent to landfill, where it creates harmful methane gas. Our landfill ban means that no biodegradable municipal waste can be sent to landfill after 2020. Our waste regulations place a statutory duty on councils to provide food waste collections in all but the most rural areas and a similar requirement applies to all businesses that produce more than 5kg of food per week. Once local authorities and businesses have collected food waste, they cannot send it for incineration or to landfill—it must be recycled.

The Scottish Government has invested more than £25 million in food waste collection since 2011, and 80 per cent of all households now have access to a food waste service. We intend to review the derogation for rural areas to ensure that we capture and deal with as much food waste as possible. We are making good progress in our efforts to keep food waste out of landfill. The United Kingdom Committee on Climate Change recognises that Scotland’s emissions from waste have reduced by 77 per cent from 1990, and we will continue those efforts as part of our climate change plan.

Food waste that has been collected from households and businesses is able to be used in anaerobic digestion to generate heat and produce digestate. Our waste regulations have helped the anaerobic digestion sector to grow in Scotland and we will continue to support it. However, the real prize is to avoid food ending up as waste in the first place, and that is what Scotland’s new food waste target is intended to achieve. I am afraid that the Labour Party appears to have missed that point. We are not starting from scratch. Between 2009 and 2014, the amount of food that we wasted at home fell by 5.7 per cent, which has saved households approximately £92 million.

I will outline some of the initiatives that have helped us to deliver reductions thus far and on which we can build in meeting the new ambitious target. For consumers, the love food, hate waste campaign provides simple solutions to help people to reduce waste and save money at home by planning meals, using up leftovers, portioning, storing food correctly to keep it fresher for longer, freezing and understanding date labels. At this time of year, that is probably one of the most germane things for us to discuss.

The good to go doggy-bag scheme now covers 100 restaurants, with the aim of reducing food waste and bringing about a shift in our culture with regard to food waste. During the pilot phase of good to go, a 40 per cent reduction was reported in the waste from restaurants that participated in the pilot.

We fund the Courtauld commitment, which is a voluntary scheme supported by Administrations across the UK that aims to reduce to food waste by 20 per cent between 2009 and 2025. Our flagship resource efficient Scotland—RES—service provides free food and drink waste audits to help businesses to cut their waste costs and reduce their carbon footprint. RES is working with NHS Tayside to trial a new catering software system that has the potential to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Zero Waste Scotland is working with small and medium-sized enterprises—10 bakeries and five breweries—to offer in-depth food waste support and create examples of best practice and guidance for the bakery sector. This morning, I visited the Breadwinner Bakery in South Gyle in Edinburgh, which is a great example of a family food business that is thinking hard about how to avoid food waste. Approximately 20 per cent of the bread that would otherwise be wasted in production is given to charity; a further 20 per cent goes to a bio company that makes animal feed; and approximately 50 per cent is donated to a local organic pig farm.

I am sure that members will be interested in the collaboration that is taking place between Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise and Zero Waste Scotland, in a project that is piloting an approach to transforming the 200,000 slices of bread that are wasted in Glasgow every day into beer, to minimise the resources that are used in the brewing process and to reduce food waste. Far be it from me to say that there are members in this chamber who probably think that that is a wonderful development.

Those are just a handful of the initiatives that are happening across Scotland. I know that members will have compelling examples to share from their constituencies. We want good practice to be extended.

Members should make no mistake; our ambition is significant. Our target is one of the most ambitious of its kind in Europe and beyond, and in due course we will consult on whether it should be voluntary or statutory. We will need to up our game. We need to learn from our experience thus far and identify the tools that will help us to reduce the food that we waste by 33 per cent. I want to work with all stakeholders, all along the supply chain from farm to plate, to identify the best way to deliver on our ambition on food waste, in parallel with our ambition to be a good food nation.

Last week, Zero Waste Scotland organised the first of a number of cross-sectoral workshops to generate ideas and identify opportunities for sectors to work together to reduce the waste that is incurred along the supply chain. We want to reduce the amount of food that is lost before it even leaves the farm, we want to help manufacturers to avoid the costs of wasted food products, and we want to help retailers to meet customer demand, while minimising the generation of surplus food.

When surplus food arises, we want it to be redirected to those who need it. Surplus food for which humans have no other use can have a role in feeding animals, and when all other options have been exhausted it can be captured by our statutory food waste collections and used to generate energy through anaerobic digestion.

Reducing food waste is a core element of our strategy, “Making Things Last: A Circular Economy Strategy for Scotland”. The work that Zero Waste Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency have done, in partnership with organisations in all our constituencies, to create a more circular economy in Scotland, has been recognised by the awards programme that the World Economic Forum runs in Davos—the circulars. Scotland has been shortlisted as a finalist at the circulars, alongside entries from China, Canada, the Netherlands and South Africa. We can all take pride in Scotland being recognised on the international stage in that way.

Next year, I intend to consult on the package of measures that we will need to put in place to deliver on our ambitious target. Ahead of that, I welcome all suggestions and ideas from members on action to reduce food waste. I must caution members that this debate is about preventing waste and not just recycling; the recycling element is not included in our 33 per cent target. I fear that Labour has perhaps misunderstood what this is about.

Reducing food waste is an environmental, moral and economic imperative.

I move,

That the Parliament considers that the amount of food, estimated at 1.35 million tonnes in 2013, wasted in Scotland is unacceptable; recognises that reducing food waste is a moral, environmental and economic imperative on everyone in Scotland, from consumers to manufacturers and retailers; notes that reducing food waste will also help families and businesses to save money while reducing emissions; welcomes the progress already made to reduce household and manufacturing food waste, and the Scottish Government's ambitious target to reduce food waste by 33% by 2025, and commits to Scotland showing leadership in this important area.