The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) may be concerned with environmental wellness, but the corporate wellness of one of its agencies is under threat due to an upcoming review of its funding. Wrap (Waste and Resources Action Programme) is the agency charged with tackling Britain’s growing food waste, but potential cuts to their funding has caused critics to question Defra’s attempt to make Britain a zero-waste economy.
In the past four years, Wrap has already had its budget halved, with £26m to work with in 2013/14. However, the agency now faces the prospect of further cuts, which has confused critics as to the government’s aims towards Britain’s waste, as well as its belief in Wrap as an effective organisation. According to Mary Creagh MP, the shadow Environment Secretary, ‘The Government has sung the praises of Wrap while slashing their funding by nearly half. Defra has failed to show leadership and has nearly trebled the amount of waste it sends to landfill in just two years.’
Andrew George, who chairs the Liberal Democrats’ Defra policy committee, added, ‘If we’re moving to a zero-waste to landfill economy, then the Government has to place any policy reviews in that context. If the Government thinks Wrap is ineffective and it wants to deploy its resources more effectively, it needs to say so.’ However, the statistics show that wrap is, by all appearances, getting the job done. The amount of food and drink thrown away by families has dropped by 13% since Wrap started targeting household waste, lowering from 8.3 million tons in 2007 to 7.2 million tons in 2010.
So if the agency has helped Britain to eliminate 1.1 million tons of waste, why do Wrap face funding cuts? A Defra spokesman noted, ‘It is normal good practice for departments to review the role of arm’s-length bodies.’ However, critics are concerned that the squeeze is politically motivated, as the review follows a clash between Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Wrap over council bin collections.
Yet campaigners are calling on the Government to shift the focus from household to industry waste. According to a report by the lobby group This Is Rubbish, the amount of food wasted in the supply chain is a grey area because many businesses do not carry out audits. The organisation has said that food waste audits need to become mandatory, and the government should set more ambitious reduction targets.