Dear Stop the Rot food waste warriors,

Thank you. You helped create food waste history: https://bit.ly/2OQrczt Over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of you called on supermarkets to regularly publish their in-store and supply chain food waste data, and to commit to ambitious targets to reduce their own stores' and their suppliers’ food waste by 30% by 2025.

And now that’s just what they’ve done. Many said it would be impossible, but today, we’re delighted to share that WRAP have announced that:

- 89 food businesses, including all the major supermarkets and numerous businesses ranging from manufacturers to farms will commit to publishing their individual food waste data by September 2019, with many of them publishing it right now, today

- Many of these businesses will also commit to reducing their food waste by 50% by 2030, and sign up to help meet Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, a commitment to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030.

- There is also an aim to get 50% of the UK's 250 largest food businesses signed up to this by Sept 2019, and 100% by 2026.

Your support got This Is Rubbish’s team into meeting rooms with supermarkets, food businesses and WRAP to work hard to push for these changes. Thank you so much again!

This Is Rubbish are now shifting our sights to winning vital government regulation to tackle food waste, and we’re currently meeting with the major political parties to achieve this.

Follow us on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/thisisrubbishmovement/

We’re run on a shoe-string and our very small team are mainly volunteers, so if you are able to donate to help our work it will make a huge difference:

Donate: https://www.thisisrubbish.org.uk/donate/

Here’s some reflections on how we got to this victory!

When we first met with supermarkets 3 years ago, sometimes we were met with interest, sometimes with resistance, but were often considered unrealistic and over-ambitious. Some supermarkets said that reporting on their individual suppliers’ food waste would be practically impossible. Many people said the industry would never come clean on their own individual business’ food waste. Everyone told us that businesses would never sign up to more than a 20% reduction by 2025. When Courtauld 2025 came out, the industry’s voluntary code to reduce food waste, we were encouraged that it included a commitment to measure farm food waste, but we were sad to see that the target was only 20% by 2025, and businesses (except Tesco) refused to release their individual business figures.

But sometimes change happens on a longer rockier road than you expect. Some companies, like Tesco, were warmer to our message than others – and we continued to meet with them in 2016 advocating for them to commit to more ambitious targets and to report on food waste in their supply chain. Having been the first UK retailer to report their in-store food waste, in 2017 Tesco announced that their 24 largest suppliers would report on their food waste too and commit to the Sustainable Development Goal target. We also continued to meet with Sainsbury’s in 2016, and although they were more resistant to our messages, they surprised us by also publishing their in-store food waste data and said other retailers should follow suit.

In 2017 This Is Rubbish turned our attention to the EU to campaign on vital legislation there, but meanwhile the seeds we’d sown in the UK continued to grow. These dominos of change we’d helped set in motion slowly fell one by one, and today the whole food industry has rushed to tackle food waste in an unprecedented show of ambition – committing to all the things we originally called on them to do with this petition.

Thank you again for helping achieve this landmark food waste moment!

Peace and potatoes,

Martin and the This Is Rubbish team

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thisisrubbishmovement/

Twitter: @foodwaste