London - Grocery manufacturers and retailers have agreed to make significant cuts to food and packaging waste that could save customers and the industry £1 billion and cut carbon emissions by three million tonnes, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced. Phase Two of the Courtauld Commitment will see the industry go further than ever, with renewed efforts to help householders waste less of the food they buy, reduce the environmental impact of packaging, and for the first time, address the waste from manufacture and supply.

A consultation on ambitious new targets to recycle over 70 percent of packaging waste was also published that could save approximately eight million tonnes of waste from landfill, and nine million tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2020.

Hilary Benn said: “A fifth of household waste is packaging, and more than half of this comes from the groceries we buy. This packaging can be essential but in many cases using less and smarter packaging can achieve the same result. Grocery manufacturers and retailers have already started to take action and have halted the increase in packaging. The new Commitment sees them go further than ever in reducing food waste and packaging, and making it smarter – and I want to see members of the industry continuing to sign-up over the coming months.”

Courtauld II runs from April 2010 to December 2012 and will:
* Reduce the carbon impact of grocery packaging by 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions (10 percent reduction) through reducing the weight, increasing the recycling rates, and increasing the recycled content of grocery packaging.
* Help consumers reduce the amount of food they waste by 330,000t (4 percent reduction) saving £800 million and over 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions in the process.
* Cut food and packaging waste throughout the supply chain, saving around 0.7million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (5 percent reduction).

Phase I of the Courtauld Commitment successfully ran from July 2005 to March 2010. Over that time its 42 signatories including all Britain’s major supermarkets, succeeded in completely halting packaging growth – the Government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) will announce results of efforts to reduce packaging and food waste later this year.

Quelle: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (defra)

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