Sustainability

As the UK's largest manufacturing sector, we will lead on collaborative transformations within the food and drink supply chain that enhance productivity and deliver environmental and social benefits to ensure safe, nutritious, affordable and sustainable food for all.

View Ambition 2025

Packaging

Packaging plays an integral role in the food and drink sector across the supply chain. Packaging prevents food waste by prolonging shelf-life and protecting the product inside.

FDF fully recognises that more needs to be done to reduce litter and marine pollution and drive up recycling across all materials, including plastics. We, and our members, are proud to be a founding signatory of the UK Plastics Pact which has 4 targets to achieve by 2025:

100% of plastic packaging will be recyclable or compostable
70% of packaging will be recycled
Eliminate unnecessary single use plastics
30% recycled content in packaging

Deposit return on drinks containers – The Scottish Government is scoping a system to introduce a charge on drinks containers that can be refunded when the consumer recycles the container.

FDF recognises that increasing recycling levels at both kerbside and on-the-go are important to tackle litter and increase recycling rates.

We believe this is best done by looking at the current recycling system holistically, given the many interdependencies and complexities. Single interventions such as a Scottish DRS need to be considered alongside reform of the current UK producer responsibility system for packaging. We are working with both Scottish and UK governments on these issues.

Our members are at the forefront of a number of other initiatives which are driving up recycling for example; Metal Matters and Every Can Counts.

Food Waste

The WRAP/IGD Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, the Your Business is Food campaign, and the Fresher for Longer campaign are important initiatives supported by FDF and intended to help meet the WRAP C2025 target and beyond this the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3.

As a business you could stand to save an average of £1200 for every tonne of food waste prevented on site!

Your Business is Food helps food manufacturing businesses make financial savings by reducing food waste. Through use of a few simple tools and other resources it is designed to help companies boost profits in ways that shouldn't cost the Earth or be too time consuming.

More information and links to the available resources »

Scottish Government Food Waste Reduction Plan

The Scottish Government has launched a new Action Plan and campaign to encourage the nation to reduce and recycle food waste to help tackle climate change.

The Scottish Government and Zero Waste Scotland unveiled the plans at the end of April to help reduce Scotland's food waste by one third by 2025 – equivalent to 297,000 tonnes of food waste a year – with a new Food Waste Reduction Action Plan (FWRAP).

The plan highlights the need for a collaborative effort across all sectors to tackle food waste and sets out actions to deliver on Scotland's target.

Your Business is Food