WRAP launches Responsibility Deal proposals for the hospitality sector

The Government’s Review of Waste last year contained a number of proposals for future ‘Deals’ with various parts of the waste chain. These have already been put in place with the waste management industry and local authorities, but now WRAP has put forward proposals for a similar arrangement with the hospitality sector. This includes pubs, restaurants, hotels and the fast-food sector.

The discussion paper published by WRAP pre-empts a launch in Spring and invited feedback by early January. It follows the principles of the Coutauld Agreement in expecting businesses in the sector to sign up on a voluntary basis the achieving the key targets:

• A reduction target of 5% of food waste compared to a 2011 baseline.
• A recycling target of 70% of food waste by 2015 – it is currently estimated to be 47%.
• The report cites a list of benefits that would accrue from this:
• £76m net saving to business
• 418k tonnes less to landfill
• 570k tonnes CO2 saving
• 60k tonne reduction in resource consumption

And then some less quantifiable benefits:

• Meeting client and consumer expectations for food waste reduction
• Driving innovation etc.

The key issue with these sorts of voluntary deals is getting sign up. It is often easier for large companies to invest in these types of benefits than smaller companies and given the generally fragmented nature of the hospitality sector, it will be interesting to see how many rise to the challenge. Economic downturns are not always the easiest time to get environmental initiatives underway and WRAP will clearly need to demonstrate the cost benefits of this sort of programme as well as the environmental opportunities. It should be helped by a £500k fund set up by Government that will be managed by WRAP specifically to support best practice food waste recycling demonstration projects.