Resources

This report highlights the need for action on food waste and provides concrete examples of how this can be achieved. 

This report provides extensive details about household food and drink waste including detailed reasons about why it is thrown away, the size of individual instances of waste and the proportion of food left in packaging. 

This short research note provides updated (2015) estimates for food surplus and waste in wholesale grocery sector, including cash and carry, and specialist wholesale markets.

Bringing together local authorities, the waste management industry and retailers to increase the quantity and quality of material collected for recycling.

This series of guidance notes provides different audiences within product development teams (e.g. designers, buyers, retailers) advice on designing to improve clothing life.

These field experiment reports for quality digestate and compost in agriculture provide a robust evidence base to support the confident use of digestate and composts as renewable fertilisers by farmers and growers.

The report, which has been developed with leading figures in the food supply chain, includes:

• The risks to the UK food system over the next 10 years if we don't embrace a business unusual approach to the way we manufacture, sell and consume food;
• The huge wealth of opportunities that developing a Flexible, Intelligent and Transparent (FIT) supply chain will open to the sector; and
• How a "business unusual" approach will enable the sector to respond flexibly to changes in demand and weather patterns, with a transparent supply chain that will limit food scares and scandals.

An agreement between the Scottish Government, Defra, the Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment with the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and its supermarket members.

The United Kingdom faces substantial economic challenges in its use of labour and scarce natural resources. While the economy has significantly increased its resource efficiency in recent years, supply risks in an increasingly competitive context mean that better use of natural resources is needed.

The route map is intended to help local authorities that collect waste to understand their legal obligations under the Regulations. It is particularly focused on Regulation 13, which concerns the separate collection of glass, metal, paper and plastic (‘the four materials’), but also explores closely related Regulation 12 requirements regarding the waste hierarchy.

This report contains analysis of the impact of the carrier-bag charge introduced in Wales in 2011 on the sales of bin bags. It quantifies the increase in sales and compares this increase to the reduction in carrier-bag use that accompanied the introduction of the charge. There is also information on trends in sales of bags for life during this period.

This report is a quantification of the true cost of food waste in the UK’s Hospitality and Food Service industry.

More recent headline figures for food waste in the sector have been published in the Courtauld Commitment 2025 Milestone Progress Report.