Woman holding shopping basket in a fresh produce aisle of a supermarket

Preventing food waste

The Resource Action Fund grant schemes for food waste prevention aimed to address three key challenges to reducing and preventing food waste:

  • utilisation of surplus food;
  • turning unavoidable food waste into valuable products; and
  • changing consumer behaviours.

Investments made by Defra through the Resource Action Fund have helped to make positive strides towards the UK achieving the Courtauld Commitment 2030 food waste and UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, to halve food wasted by 2030, and prevent the CO2e emissions caused by food being sent to landfill.

Impact

Overall, the initiatives funded are expected to divert over 30,466 tonnes of food from being wasted and therefore to avoid over 122,588 tonnes of CO2e emissions. It is also anticipated that grant projects will result in 29 new full-time equivalent jobs.

To find out more about the impact of the Fund, download the Resource Action Fund's food grants brochure or watch the video of the work undertaken by City Harvest who received a Food Waste Prevention Grant.

WRAP will continue to monitor the progress of RAF capital grants, to understand the outcomes and impacts of the funding awarded, in relation to:

  • the volume of surplus food redistributed;
  • sources of surplus food, for example; provider category, geographical region, food type, where the food has been diverted from, and whether food was supplied by an existing or new supplier;
  • number of end beneficiaries and how food was redistributed to them (e.g., via food bank, community shop, youth club, etc.);
  • new opportunities realised, e.g., new staff and volunteer roles created, new partnerships/networks established, and plans for wider implementation;
  • the number of citizens reached through the interventions; lessons learnt and barriers faced.

More about the Resource Action Fund grants