Princes Group announces worldwide decrease in food wastage

International food and drink group, Princes, has published food waste data for its global operations, reporting an 18% fall from last year, and a 38% reduction against the group’s 2018/2019 baseline.

The group said this marks half a decade of continued progress and puts the company firmly on track to meet its 2030 goal to halve food waste.

Of the 58,575 tonnes of food waste generated globally 19,269 tonnes were sent to anaerobic digestion plants to be converted into energy, while 34,409 tonnes were recycled into bio-based materials and 3,794 tonnes were used as animal feed.

Princes also redistributed 192 tonnes of food to charities. Food was sent via the Polish Red Cross to those impacted by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, as well as communities who receive support from the UK’s leading food waste and hunger charity, FareShare. Since 2013, Princes has donated all food and drink that cannot be sold to FareShare. Following a decade of donating to the organisation, Princes has this year been recognised as one of the charity’s ‘leading food partners’.

Via its work with FareShare, Princes was one of a number of major businesses to announce its support for The Coronation Food Project, an initiative launched by His Majesty King Charles III, which aims to redistribute more surplus food to vulnerable communities, while working to reduce carbon emissions.

The business’ involvement also includes supporting The Alliance Manufacturing programme, part of the Project which seeks to unlock more surplus food for redistribution by bringing project members together to share their surplus, underutilised and donated resources, such as food, materials, and labour.

As a signatory to the Champions 12.3 coalition of organisations dedicated to accelerating progress towards tackling global food waste, Princes has adopted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3 – “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”.

Princes is also committed to maintaining zero to landfill waste across its UK operations and accelerating progress towards achieving this across all international operations.

David McDiarmid, corporate relations director at Princes, noted food waste reduction remains high on our agenda, and is something we are continuing to review and improve, across our operations.

“This is demonstrated by the continuous progress we’ve made over the past five years, and by our increased focus in consumer-focused campaigns designed to minimise waste at home,” McDiarmid said. “We’ve made significant progress achieving a 38% reduction to date, which puts us in a healthy position to achieve a 50% reduction by 2030. We know there is more work to be done, which is why we approach food waste as a farm-to-fork matter and engage with both our supply chain and consumers to encourage progress in these areas.”

Princes continues to support WRAP’s year-round activity by using its channels to highlight the impact of food waste. Additionally, Princes has continued to share new consumer recipes online, many designed with cost-effectiveness and cutting food waste in mind.

Continued progress to reduce waste and reuse materials is key to Princes’ 2030GreenGoals initiative, which outlines the Group’s ambition to become a carbon neutral manufacturing business across its UK and international operations by 2030.

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