Meeting of the Parliament 15 December 2016
I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate. We should celebrate the fact that Parliament is having a dedicated debate on food waste, which is a good illustration of how the agenda has changed over recent years. I congratulate Roseanna Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, on bringing the debate to Parliament. It is unlikely that five or 10 years ago we would all have recognised food waste as being a subject that deserves its own dedicated debate in Parliament, so things are certainly going in the right direction.
I strongly support the Scottish Government’s target to reduce food waste by a third by 2025. There is no doubt that throughout this parliamentary session, the impact of food in all its forms on our health and wellbeing, on our economy—especially given current economic trends—on our environment and on poverty will be much higher up the agenda. The good food nation bill that was promised in the SNP’s manifesto will be a golden opportunity to put in place radical, innovative and forward-thinking measures to progress all those agendas—measures that future generations of Scots will thank us for putting in place when they look back in many years.
If we look at how behaviour has changed in society in recent years thanks to the advent of the Parliament, we see good examples to learn from. For example, the plastic bag levy has helped to change behaviour and, today, we are discussing how 75 per cent of households in Scotland now have a food recycling service. That has been achieved in a few short years. As many other members do, I have my food caddy at home. I now just take it for granted and cannot imagine living without it and the other recycling bins that I have at home in Moray. However, I am still appalled by how often I have to empty the food caddy. There is clearly still a long way to go in our behaviour.
The issue is Scottish, but it is also global. If we have any doubt about how important the agenda is, we have only to look at some of the jaw-dropping statistics about human behaviour, the impact that we are having on the planet and the food debate around that on the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s website. I will quote a couple of statistics. First,
“one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year … gets … wasted”—
that is 1.3 billion tonnes—and
“Global quantitative food losses and waste per year are roughly 30% for cereals, 40-50% for root crops, fruits and vegetables, 20% for oil seeds, meat and dairy plus 35%”
of the world’s fish stocks. Those foods are wasted. If I remember correctly, nearly one third of the world’s fertile land grows food that is wasted. Those are startling statistics that we have to address as a society across the globe. However, we must play our part in Scotland, as well.
Many other agendas that Parliament deals with join up with that—I am thinking in particular about climate change. We have to accept that if we do not tackle climate change the amount of food from fertile land that will be wasted through storms and adverse and extreme weather events will continue to increase. All the energy, nutrients and soils that are put into that production will also be wasted. Also, if food waste is put into landfill it produces gases that contribute to climate change. The agendas are, therefore, tied together.
Many good organisations in Scotland are doing good work. Many food banks—in particular, Moray food bank, with which I am very familiar—are putting efforts into developing new projects that link reducing food waste with tackling food poverty. I ask ministers in the Government to look at opportunities in our communities to tackle those two big issues at the same time. Many projects are looking for funding to use food that would normally go to waste to feed families who are, unfortunately, too often going without. All those agendas are very much joined up.
I welcome the debate and hope that we will have another on food waste soon.
16:31