Food aid or a 'disposal channel'? Writing the Used By report

On a Tuesday in late March, food justice campaigner Lucy Antal told a packed room off Westminster Hall about a food bank that had received a donation of 10,000 eggs. That's not a typo: 10,000 eggs. To make it more difficult, they had arrived in boxes of 160 which couldn't be split up further. But the cherry on top was that they only had one day left on the expiry date.

Lucy had told me this story when I'd first come to work with food NGO Feedback to help write Used By: How businesses dump their waste on food charities, and it really illustrated to me the need to amplify this kind of issue. I was delighted to be able to present the findings of the report with her, Sabine Goodwin (Chief Executive of the Independent Food Aid Network, IFAN), and Jessica Sinclair Taylor (Deputy Director of Feedback) at the event in Parliament, chaired by Sheila Dillon (BBC Radio 4's Food Programme).

My research at Bristol University investigates food waste in households, and I explore what happens behind the scenes that makes food waste so prevalent. Feedback takes a similar approach but on the scale of the food system, and the Used By report digs deeper into the question of what is happening behind the scenes of food redistribution: what is the real story, and what is it like to be treated as a solution to food waste?

We sent out a survey to understand the experiences of those working in food aid organisations, especially what kind of condition food is in when donated, and how much work goes into dealing with this food. When over 10 million tonnes of food is wasted every year in the UK, I think it's politically tempting to claim that passing this food onto food banks and other food aid organisations is mutually beneficial. But our findings demonstrate that in practice, food insecurity and food waste are not real solutions to each other; both must be prevented at source, and it's not fair to put the burden on these charities to do the (sometimes dirty) work.

I am very grateful to the respondents who took time from their busy and important work to answer the survey. Shockingly, 91% reported that they have had to discard donated food, mostly because it arrived already damaged or inedible in some way. They also emphasised that it can take a lot of labour to make donated food appropriate for their service users, especially if it arrives in huge quantities. As one said, "there are only so many courgettes we can make use of in a week".

We were lucky enough to receive incredibly rich insights through their comments, which the report features most prominently. I also wanted to foreground these voices as much as possible, which you'll see throughout the report. A particular comment that struck me was "I think it is wrong that supermarkets can record zero waste when actually we, as a food bank, are having to dispose of their waste." This perfectly encapsulated the whole problem. Others spoke of feeling like a "waste collector" and "disposal channel" while businesses can tick corporate social responsibility boxes and push disposal costs down the chain.

Another thing I noticed when reading the comments was a real feeling of frustration and injustice at the system we're currently in. This is a side of food redistribution that is not talked about enough. Although food aid workers are doing an amazing job, and deserve greater support and resources, they themselves say that it shouldn't be like this.

In fact, 98 per cent of respondents thought the government should be doing more to prevent food waste and the need for food aid in the first place. There was near complete unanimity for systemic changes for both issues. 84 per cent said it was essential that larger businesses should be legally required to report their food waste, and 90 per cent said it was essential for government to remove the five-week wait for Universal Credit payments.

At the event, one attendee asked the important question: if food waste and food banks were to disappear, what would happen to the millions of people that rely on them? We are in agreement with organisations like IFAN that at the same time as acting on food waste (for which we wrote another report), the government must combat poverty with cash-first solutions and policy measures like the amendment to Universal Credit payments mentioned above. For existing services, we propose a whistle-blowing mechanism whereby food aid and redistribution organisations can report when bad quality food is repeatedly passed on to them.

I'm really pleased that we had two MPs from both Labour and the Lib Dems co-sponsoring this event and spoke passionately about this issue, showing that there is cross-party support and political will for meaningful change. Since the event, I've had messages from people saying they've seen similar problems with food redistribution, including in the US and Australia. I hope this report reinforces what many have already known: that food waste will not solve food insecurity anywhere, no matter how many eggs are donated.