British lawmakers demand action from Juncker on food waste

23-07-2015 (updated: 23-01-2020 )

Composting is the most common method for recycling food waste. [Ian Barbour/Flickr]

The House of Lords, along with 16 member states, sent a letter to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday (22 July) demanding that the EU crack down on food waste.

An estimated 89 million tonnes of food are wasted across Europe every year. This figure could rise to approximately 126 million tonnes by 2020 if no action is taken.

Globally, as much as half of all the food produced – equivalent to 2 billion tonnes – ends up as waste every year, according to the report Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not from 2013.

Therefore, lawmakers have proposed a ‘Green Card’ on the issue, which asks for a range of actions to cut down on waste. It includes better EU-wide guidelines on food donation and stronger monitoring of cross-border supply chains.

“Food waste is a huge issue, not just for us in the UK, but across Europe. With these 16 national parliaments signed up, we have shown the European Commission that there is a real collective desire to work together to tackle this problem. We look forward to seeing what proposals the Commission comes up with,” said Baroness Scott, chair of the EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee in the House of Lords.

Until now national parliaments have been able to register objections to certain EU laws on the grounds of ‘subsidiarity’.

However, they have not had the opportunity or means to combine their proposals for new initiatives. The new Green Card idea is based on the EU Committee’s 2014 report on The Role of National Parliaments in the EU that allows national parliaments to join forces to make proposals to the Commission.

So far, the first ever Green Card from national parliaments is backed by 16 out of 41 chambers, including the national parliaments of France, Portugal and the Netherlands.

“Mr Juncker and his colleagues have made it clear that they want to engage better with national parliaments, so I sincerely hope that the Commission sits up and takes notice of our proposal. We’ve shown we can work together, across national boundaries, in order to give national parliaments, and the citizens they represent, a greater say in shaping the EU,” said Lord Boswell, chair of the Lords’ EU Select Committee.

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0 responses to “British lawmakers demand action from Juncker on food waste”

Peter Hurrell says:

24/07/2015 at 13:49

The quantities of food waste lauded around across the European Union repeatedly by the various organisations within the various countries across their respective legislatures are hugely exaggerated and vastly larger by huge amounts. And none more so than the quantities in the Germany and France and the UK.

Take a look at the alleged quantities given here.

89 Million tonnes of food waste is repeated here [as of 2014] and is quoted for the EU at today’s rates and a further projected (whatever that means) 120 Million tonnes is quoted as an estimate by 2020!!

Both figures are farcical and vastly wrong by any stretch of the imagination!

Just look at the figures and the population. 89 million tonnes in the population of 507 Million represents a ludicrous 176 kilogramme [kg] per person – man woman child old-age pensioner. Likewise it is important also to note that it does not include hospitals care and nursing homes or prisons and education establishments. These places do not contribute to this food waste area as they are collected separately. These “alleged” figures for food waste do not include for this proportion of the population under any guise at all.

If you just think logically and address the population demographics. This quantity of Alleged food waste as reported here makes the bland assumptions that

1] a nursing child – who has a body mass of less than 12-14 kg is alleged to waste over 14 and a ½
times his or her equivalent body mass in food waste per year,

and

2] a child under the age of 6 with an average body mass of under 30 kg is alleged to waste over 5 times his or her equivalent body mass in food waste per year,

and

3] a secondary level student [aged 11 to 19] with a body mass of 50 kg is alleged to waste 3.6 times his or her equivalent body mass in food waste,

and

4] retired people (they represent 35+% of the whole population of the EU) – most of whom have suffered or have been used to various forms of food restrictions throughout their formative lives –and the majority of whom have an average body mass of less than 60 kg is alleged to dispose of 3 times his or her equivalent body mass per year.

Just think through these issues alone as reported under the above categories and any reasonably astute person can understand that if you looked at these figures as they stood they would be totally wrong and false. Can you see a child who is under the age of 1 throwing away 12 and a ½ times his body mass in food waste? Or a young child throwing away 6 times his body mass in food waste per year? And a young person throwing over 3and ½ his or her body mass in food waste per year? And a Pensioner throwing away a similar 3+ times his body mass as food waste per year? This is the nonsense being espoused here by the statements here and they are a perpetuation of falsehoods centred around a series of nonsenses.

Importantly in all of the figures, used to perpetrate the false information about the quantities of food waste being generated across the EU, it should be noted that these Alleged Food Waste quantities do not include the quantities of food waste thrown away or produced and discarded from:- hospitals and nursing or care homes; prisons and the likes; education establishments; hotels and restaurants and other food hospitality areas; or from food halls and places where foods are sold to the public (such as vegetable and fruit markets and halls, shops and supermarkets and the like,) and equally that it does not include food waste generated in the food preparation industries or the places from whence food is grown.

Of equal importance in recent times the very figures that have been quoted here – be they from the whole of the European Union or from the individual member Countries and States have been shown to be fully unrealistic. We quote some recent examples.

Under the guise of learned reports across the EU, there were questions asked about reports on the background numbers [quantities] to the German and UK food waste statistics and these were questioned in the Waste Industry as being totally unrealistic. The reason behind this is the knowledge that the numbers of treatment process plants that have been built in recent time to treat this food waste have been shown to be totally over-sized in total treatment capacity by more than 300% with the consequence that there is a shortage of the waste needed to keep them going and many are being re-addressed for other purposes and even closed down. The comparable figures in France have shown that contrary to the Alleged Enormous Food Waste Statistics from its two comparably-sized neighbours in population – Germany and the UK – they record barely 28% the quantities wasted per person per year! Now we hear that Italy is also finding that it now has questioned the quantities for the same reason!

So therefore what is going on here?

The UK has sent a message to the EU about this from the second House of Parliament to be addressed by the EU as a piece of discussion on highly suspect food waste figures and has perpetuated a known falsity of repeating fully exaggerated and totally unfounded and “over-estimated” figures because they were given them. The EU reports annually a series of figures on food waste based again on the same perpetuation of a known falsity of repeating the same fully exaggerated claims on unfounded and “over-exaggerated” figures based upon the same analogous information and has rounded them up to accommodate the greater population of the European Union! This quantity is glibly repeated without thought or reason, as being 89 Million tonnes in 2015!

And now – as we are in the middle of 2015 and we are reporting on figures that were possibly generated before 2014 – it is suggested that by 2020 the “Estimated” quantities will increase by a further 41.5% to 126 Million tonnes per annum! Who is kidding whom? This is absolute nonsense.

You in the European Union (and its member Countries and States) and the EURACTIV press portals must realise that we as the readers here are LEARNED and we should not be treated as such here. So we need to be treated with respect so that when it comes to publishing such claims as here repeated without question. It is any surprise that We consider these figures to be SUSPECT AND NONSENSICAL INCORPORATING KNOWN FALSITY OF REPEATING THE SAME FULLY EXAGGERATED CLAIMS ON UNFOUNDED AND OVER-EXAGGERATED FIGURES ON THE QUANTITIES OF FOOD WASTE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THEN TREATING THESE AS REALiSITIC WHEN INSPECTION FROM OUTSIDE POINTS TO THE LOGIC THAT THEY COULD NOT EVER BE NEAR THESE QUANTITIES BY MAGINTUDES OF THREE AND EVEN FOUR AND FIVE TIMES THE REAL QUANTITUES!

You in the European Union and EURACTIV are challenged here and have a duty now to justify these figures once and for all. They do not make sense and just cannot be correct.

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British lawmakers demand action from Juncker on food waste

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Mella Frewen, Director General of FoodDrinkEurope

Susan Danger, CEO, AmCham EU

British lawmakers demand action from Juncker on food waste

Background

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Lawmakers

EURACTIV's editorial content is independent from the views of our sponsors.

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Mella Frewen, Director General of FoodDrinkEurope

Susan Danger, CEO, AmCham EU