Jim O'Callaghan
Question:119. Deputy Jim O'Callaghan asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the steps his Department is taking to tackle food waste. [19716/23]
View answerThursday, 27 April 2023
Questions (119)
Written answers
My Department published Ireland’s National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap 2023-2025 in November 2022. The Roadmap sets out a number of priority actions to bring the focus on food waste prevention, across key sectors in the food supply chain, together in a coherent manner.
For example in relation to the retail sector, actions under the Roadmap aimed at preventing surplus food being wasted include:
• Investigate the potential impact of a prohibition on the destruction of edible food in advance of its ‘use-by’ date.
• Investigate the regulatory and legal barriers to ‘Good Samaritan’ acts of donation and whether mandatory donation of edible food from retail outlets would reduce food waste.
• Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s [EPA's] Food Waste Charter, support a voluntary target with retailers and the processing industry for a percentage of edible food to be donated.
My Department will be progressing the implementation of such actions in accordance with the associated timelines set out in the National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap 2023-2025.
My Department also provides funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, which operates the 'Stop Food Waste' campaign which has been highly successful in tacking food waste in the household sector as part of its wider food waste prevention programme.