Comment by maccard
19 hours ago
Sure - but my point is that the waste by businesses absolutely dwarves domestic waste. I used to work in a shop, and we “recycled” (LDPE so not recyclable) more plastic in a week than I have used in the 10 years since I worked there.
I’m not saying that individuals have no impact; our habits are absolutely important and we influence industry. But moving the needle on industry waste will have a more significant on the global situation than halving domestic waste in the UK.
The EU seems to agree: the 2030 target, set in 2025, requires a reduction of “10%, in processing and manufacturing” which will probably have an oversized impact on waste in actual kilos reduced, relative to the combined retail-domestic target.
Yeah - I agree. It’s also still sad to see that we are beholden to industries dragging their feet. A 10% reduction in 5 years isn’t enough, but they will claim difficulties and issues in the scale. Yet when Covid hit, or AI came on the scene, companies showed they had no problem conforming when forced.
The EU-wide 10% reduction in 5 years is a union-level response to the member states failing to make consistent and timely progress towards the 50% reduction target, replacing unenforced targets with enforced ones:
> food waste generation is not decreasing as required to make significant progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 [which] calls for halving per capita global food waste at retail and consumer level
Sadly, their general analysis found that:
> for most companies, for every $1 invested in reducing food waste, they saved $14 or more
And another in restaurants specifically found a median of $1 invested, $6 saved; so this is an unusual case where businesses are ignoring potential profit gains. The industry-specific analysis found "that food waste is not typically measured as part of a restaurant’s standard operating procedures" and "that information is not always communicated back to food service teams", with the outliers who had prevented their food waste having all implemented those exact two things:
The business case for reducing food loss and waste: Restaurants (2019) https://food.ec.europa.eu/document/download/a618c472-602e-45...
Blame for this issue is placed squarely, and deservedly, on management rather than line workers (who often spoke up and were disregarded) for failing to make this a priority over competing interests. Once the EU intervened and offered small investments to bait managers into compliance — "average cost to invest in food waste reduction was only 0.4 percent of annual food sales" — food waste dropped by +/-50% and total COGS dropped by 2%.
One of their test companies was IKEA, which saw -20% waste in 12 weeks; 3 years later, IKEA crossed the -50% waste threshold voluntarily.
So I think that a large part of this is that trickle-down voluntary regulation doesn't work: the EU didn't issue binding regulations onto its states, so the states were unreliable at delivering meaningful regulations to their industries, so the businesses were unreliable at realizing or caring about 'investing in future cost savings' when they see only drawbacks in direct staffing costs and temporary reductions in service efficiency for process redevelopment.
Glad to see the EU hold the states' feet to the fire on this all. They started with food and apparel, but once those are being properly addressed there's more waiting :)