As a nation, we are binning 4.5 million tonnes of food which could have been eaten, every year and 70% of it is wasted by people in their own homes. With food waste collections being rolled out across the UK, we know that householders will become more aware of any food being wasted and this will lead to a small decrease in food waste, which is good, but we need to do more. This is an area that Love Food Hate Waste is looking into – to see if we can combine food waste recycling and prevention messages for future communications.
At Love Food Hate Waste, we motivate citizens to change their behaviours around food waste.
Back in March, we ran our third annual hero campaign, Food Waste Action Week, with the aim of motivating householders to change specific behaviours around food waste, both in the UK and globally.
We put people at the heart of this year’s theme for Food Waste Action Week: ‘Win. Don’t Bin’. Launching the campaign during a cost-of-living crisis, we used a positive tone with a focus on using up and making the most of food which had already been bought. WRAP estimates that 1.1 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten goes to waste in UK homes due to preparing, cooking or serving too much, costing UK householders £3.5 billion a year. With this in mind, we focused the campaign messaging on the opportunity to use up leftovers, highlighting the potential of saving time and money by reducing food waste.
To generate media interest in the campaign, we developed a PR stunt. We worked with celebrity ambassador, Jordan Banjo, who was pictured next to a giant 7ft egg timer which had been created to visually represent the 2 ½ days a year that citizens could save by using up their leftovers. Using this imagery and video footage, the campaign secured 86 pieces of coverage in the media across the week.
We were excited to see local authorities from across the UK getting involved, sharing messaging, tips and fun facts about food waste across your communities. Thank you for all your support! As a result of this collaborative effort, we are delighted to share that the campaign reached 15% of UK adults, with 61% of them reporting to have taken action to make their food go further as a direct result of having seen or heard something about the campaign.
That’s equivalent to over 5 million people making their food go further.
You can see highlights from the campaign here: Food Waste Action Week 2023 highlights - YouTube.
We are now looking to next year, firming up on the campaign approach and theme, and we will keep you posted on developments with this as soon as we can. If you’re interested in finding out more, or getting involved in next year's campaign, please get in touch on lfhw@wrap.org.uk.
We’re proud of the work we’ve done so far, but we won’t stop there. We are already exploring ways to reach more citizens, helping them to reduce food waste in their homes. With your help, we can ensure those messages go further. We’ve just joined the Let’s Go Zero campaign – bringing a powerful network of organisations together to drive change in UK schools, getting them to zero carbon by 2030.
Lastly, just a quick reminder about the next Recycle Week, bought to you by our partners at Recycle Now. Save the date in your diaries from 16-22 October and look out for more on how you can get involved - coming soon!
