The Government’s new strategy on packaging, ‘Making the Most of Packaging’, has received an important vote of support from The Food and Drink Federation (FDF).
Reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill is a priority for the FDF who have undertaken their own considerable waste reduction targets.
Julian Hunt, FDF Director of Communications, said: “We agree that it’s important for the Government’s packaging strategy to focus on waste prevention. That’s why members of the Food and Drink Federation have a bold ambition to send zero food and packaging waste from factories to landfill by 2015 and are working closely with WRAP (Waste Resources Action Program) and others to reduce the amount of packaging reaching households.
“Recovery and recycling are also important elements of any strategy and we look forward to working with Government to improve the country’s recycling infrastructure and to increase capacity in new technologies such as anaerobic digestion,” Mr Hunt said.
In July 2008 FDF and Defra published the results of the first ever survey of food and packaging waste arising at FDF members’ UK production sites.
The survey’s main findings were that FDF members prevented over half a million tonnes of waste being created in 2006 by, for example, ensuring that by-products from food production were used in animal feed. Furthermore, of the 835,000 tonnes of food and packaging waste produced at 236 FDF member production sites in 2006, 686,000 tonnes (82%) were recycled or recovered in some way.
Tim Brown
