Household Food Waste in Wales - 2015

The Courtauld Commitment 2025 – an ambitious voluntary agreement that brings together organisations across the food system, from producer to consumer, to make food and drink production and consumption more sustainable – has a target to reduce food waste by 20% by 2025, from farm to fork.  WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign aims to help tackle food waste at a household level, where 70% of post-farm-gate food waste arises in the UK.

As part of a larger study to update the estimates of household food waste at a UK level, WRAP has made use of data from the Welsh Government funded municipal waste compositional research to produce new estimates for household food waste in Wales, and an assessment of change over time.

This analysis shows there has been a significant reduction in household food waste in Wales between 2009 and 2015.  There was a reduction in avoidable household food waste of 24,000 tonnes (around 11%), equating to approximately £70 million worth of food not ending up as waste per annum.  The CO2e savings would be around 105,000 tonnes a year.  There is also evidence that levels of household food waste are lower in Wales than the rest of the UK.