These guidelines clarify and contextualise the requirements from the UK Guidelines for Measuring and Reporting Food Surplus and Waste (UK Guidelines), for the retail sector, based on retailers’ specific operational considerations.
The purpose is to help food retailers measure and report on food surplus and waste that occurs within their own operations, so they can reduce it through evidence-driven strategies.
What are the guidelines based on?
The recommendations support measurement and reporting using transparent, consistent principles that align with the global Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard (FLW Standard), building upon FLW Standard requirements to additionally support the Courtauld 2025 Commitment and the UK Food Waste Reduction Roadmap.
Why measure and report food waste?
Firstly, the visibility it creates provides an incentive for change through establishing a baseline and benchmarks; secondly, targeted interventions can be identified and enacted, through a detailed breakdown of waste hotspots, to help entities reduce waste; and, thirdly, by quantifying the scale of food waste over time, progress towards targets, such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 which aims to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels” by 2030, can be monitored and success verified.
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