THE SUSTAINABLE RESTAURANT Association (SRA) has issued a last call for businesses to get behind its FoodSave programme, which aims to reduce food waste in the Capital.
With just four weeks to go before the campaign ends the SRA, alongside Sustain, wants to encourage further engagement with its programme, which the organisation says can help save large amounts of money for small to medium-sized food businesses.
The reason for the last ditch attempt to garner interest? By its own admission, 94% of businesses it has approached have turned down its offer of a free consultation. It claims most of those say they don’t have a waste problem. The SRA professes to have saved the businesses collaborating a total of £300,000 per year.
The SRA press release states that: So far, the SRA has found that a staggering 94% of businesses have turned down the offer of support, with a large proportion of them claiming they don’t have a food waste problem or don’t have time to address it.
In contrast to the SRA's London-centric FoodSave programme, WRAP's Hospitality and Food Service Agreement (HaFSA) is making great strides; achieving "good progress against the HaFSA targets last year". Numerous case studies are evidence of significant advances in the fight against food waste nationally.
Just like WRAP’s Hospitality and Food Service Agreement (HaFSA), FoodSave is hitting all targets and making great progress in the fight against food waste. The FoodSave programme has worked with over 90 SME businesses in the capital. These businesses together are expected to save a total of more than £300,000 per year, and cut their food and related packaging waste by 259 tonnes (equivalent to 21 double-decker buses), and divert 880 tonnes of surplus food to good causes.
We also have numerous case studies that evidence the significant advances.
But the SRA and Sustain are much more ambitious and want to see more SMEs in London benefit from the scheme. That’s why we are calling on them to take this last chance to take advantage of this transformational project.