Household Food Management Survey in Wales

WRAP’s Household Food Management Survey in Wales* is the largest and longest running survey of its kind since 2007, gathering evidence on citizens food waste attitudes, knowledge, and behaviour. It is designed to inform WRAP’s policy and campaign work by assessing any changes in attitudes and behaviours over time.  

Fieldwork for the Household Food Management Survey in Wales was undertaken online by Icaro, between the 21st June – 1st July 2024. A total of 1,006 interviews were undertaken with adults in Wales who have responsibility for food shopping and / or preparation in the home.

Key findings

• The survey indicates that self-reported waste of the four key products (bread, milk, chicken and potatoes) has remained fairly stable since 2023. It is, however, slightly above the 2018 baseline. The average amount of waste for the four key products is now 20.8% (compared to 21% in the UK). Outside of the four key products, the amounts of fresh produce being wasted has shown a slight increase since November 2023, but results for Wales are below the UK average.
• Higher levels of food waste are concentrated among specific groups, e.g. those aged 35-44, those with a higher number of displaced meals (eating out, takeaways), those with lower competencies for judging and buying the right amount, and those who agree they are comfortable wasting food. Understanding the interactions between these behaviours and attitudes will enable WRAP and others to target interventions to these groups who are consistently over-indexing on self-reported food waste.
• Unlike in the wider UK, Wales has maintained high levels of recall of food waste information, and, in doing so, maintained the salience of the issue. While we are unable to confirm causality, the fact that communication recognition has held up in Wales, compared to quite steep falls across the rest of the UK, does suggest a positive effect of the recent Be Mighty Recycle campaigning, which has had a primary focus on food waste since 2023. Another possible causality is the well-established and universal Household Food Waste collection service that has been running in Wales for several years.

Other key facts include:  

• Despite a high agreement of food waste being an important national issue (88%), personal responsibility indicators remain lower, with 65% agreeing that they are making more of an effort to reduce their food waste. These figures are marginally higher than the UK for both statements.
• 11% of citizens in Wales agree they are comfortable wasting food, and a further 13% are ambivalent.
• Across most food concern categories there are little or no changes between November 2023 and June 2024. The most notable changes are a decline in the level of concern about food prices (from 64% to 58%), a decline in the percentage that cite being able to afford enough food (from 22% to 17%), an increase in those who reported food poisoning as a concern (from 17% to 20%), and a rise in those who reported the impact of processed/ultra-processed foods as a concern (from 30% to 33%).
• Concern around food waste remains high, with 33% recognising it as a top 5 issue. 
• Competencies and behaviours around food management are generally not improving and remain fairly static since 2022. A key weakness for both high food wasters and not high food wasters is not overbuying.
• There has been a significant increase in recognition of WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign since 2018 and now Wales is above the UK average for the first time – with 36% of citizens in Wales reporting to recognise the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, compared to the 32% in UK.
• The recall of information about the amount of food that is wasted has increased to 55%, which is also above the UK average (45%).
• Almost nine in ten (87%) citizens in Wales identify something that they think would help them to reduce their food waste. Popular ideas included organisational competencies, such as: pre-shop checking of fridge, freezers and cupboards, better fridge management, meal planning, keeping track of items that have been opened, and sticking to the shopping list (with almost everyone recognising that they make unplanned purchases). Grocery retailers providing more choice of pack size was also popular.

* Previously known as WRAP’s Food Tracker Survey