My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for supporting and putting his name to this amendment. Unfortunately, he is involved in the debate on Europe in the Chamber at the moment and cannot be here.
An obvious issue is sorting out and taking a much more robust approach to food waste. This arises within the context of a much broader issue. Worldwide, some 30% of all the food that is produced is lost between the field and the end consumer. In developed countries, it is mainly around wastage because we do not use our refrigerated produce quickly enough or we buy more than we need and throw it away. In non-developed countries, it is around the failure of the supply chain so that food is wasted, lost or defiled as it is distributed. We have one last chance to make up for what we have wasted at the end of the food chain by using it to produce energy and other materials. The amendment seeks to guide the United Kingdom more in that direction.
There is a double benefit here. First, renewable energy is produced and, secondly, the cost of landfill is substantially reduced. It has been estimated that landfill worth some half a billion pounds would be saved if we managed to treat all our food waste in this way. I shall come on to some of the practical experiences seen in parts of the UK and elsewhere in the world on food waste strategies, but let me go through the practicalities briefly. The amendment does not provide that this should happen immediately. It understands clearly that there is a timeframe and there must be a proper strategy which is worked through in a practical fashion during the following years. Having said that, we know that recycling works and that people are able and willing to sort their rubbish in different ways. In fact, food waste is already being segregated and taken away in a number of different areas.
In Wales, a food waste collection service is available to 88% of households. The technology is already in place and well proven, particularly in anaerobic digestion. A quite staggering estimate is that in Wales some £420-worth of food is wasted by each family every year, and I suspect that the figure is exactly the same for the rest of the UK. It represents food that has already been bought but is thrown away. It is much better to reduce such wastage first of all, but if that cannot be done, we need at least to use it later. In London, 23 out of 33 boroughs provide some sort of food waste collection. Fifteen boroughs are very adept at it and do well, but 10 still do not manage to undertake any food waste collection at all. It has also been estimated that if the whole of London managed to segregate and reuse its food waste, that would avoid some 900,000 tonnes of landfill which would save 400,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and reduce landfill costs by £9 million. Again, that demonstrates the multifaceted benefits of doing this. This is strongly promoted elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Austria, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in a number of municipalities in north America.
Given all that, what is there to lose? It is slightly more difficult because we have to make sure that households can segregate their food waste more easily. A number of households, of which mine is one, are deeply into composting so that uncooked food waste is used in the garden. I have become a real convert to composting over the past couple of years. However, we would win in many ways. We would see a major reduction in the cost of landfill. There would be a substantial source of renewable energy. I think that some 3% of our greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to methane, which is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. We could really get our anaerobic digestion industry going, we would have landfill reductions and methane reductions and at the end of the process we would have a fantastic compostable material that can be used in gardens and on agricultural land to make sure that every aspect of the technology is used. I beg to move.
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